


The Haunting of Louis Tomlinson

by HelloAmHere



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Ghosts, Harry is a complete drama queen and also A GHOST, I have no idea how bridge works I apologize to everyone who has ever played, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Magical Realism, SPOILER ALERT SORRY, but triumphing over it, obviously there is food, old creaky haunted houses, semi-secretly magical Zayn, there is some poking fun at religion here which is meant to be relatively gentle soooo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-01 02:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13285218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelloAmHere/pseuds/HelloAmHere
Summary: “I'm not afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.Every single magnet unstuck itself from the fridge and fell to the floor in a clattering cascade.“I'm only a little afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.***OR: Louis is a plucky Gothic Heroine, Harry is a Mournful Spirit, and Big Country Houses are full of mystery and suspense, as Big Country Houses ever are!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I thought about this story during our recent snow day, and then I had to just pound it all out until it was out of my head! So this is pretty freeform and low editing.
> 
> I hope you enjoy! <3
> 
> Feel free to hit me up [on my tumblr](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/) re: fic, writing, etc! And here is [the fic post](https://helloamhere.tumblr.com/post/170858971888/the-haunting-of-louis-tomlinson-chapter-1) for this story!

The thing about inheriting a giant, ancient country house from a mysterious great aunt along with a mysterious condition that said you have to live alone the house for at least six months before the ownership would be fully turned over was that you had to actually, fucking, _do that._

The thing about giant, ancient country houses was that they were far out in the actual country, away from everything and everybody.

The thing about giant country houses far out in the country away from everybody was that they gave you the perfect excuse to get a little bit of time to, whatever. To pretend you were really annoyed about the mysterious inheritance and you couldn’t believe the solicitor was holding you to it. To throw only your comfiest, rattiest clothes into your bags while loudly complaining about the lack of good clubs far out in the country. To go out one last time with your mates to a good club and privately be so blisteringly grateful that it was the last time for at least six months (drunk and affectionate, they’ll all promise to visit, but they won’t). To take a pile of the books you’d been meaning to read and the recipes you’d wanted to learn and the movies you’d been meaning to watch and to just, fucking, _do that._

  


***

 

It’s not like Louis wasn’t warned.

“That house is haunted,” was what the girl at the post office had said, straight up. She said it with an uninterpretable twinkle in her eye, leaning over the counter and looking at Louis expectantly. The post office didn’t seem to get a lot of visitors, and Louis had stopped in by accident because it looked like a cafe from the outside.

It looked like a cafe from the inside, too. The girl had an espresso machine next to the stamp dispenser. There was an elderly couple at a table by a window, sharing a cookie and two cups of tea. Louis could have used some tea, but he was eager to get to the place and start unpacking. He’d felt a little bubbling happy current in his stomach ever since leaving the city, like he was stepping into his own private fairy tale.  

“Is it really? That’s classic,” he said. Might as well humor the new neighbors.

“That it is,” said the old man, nodding, “Right well haunted. Always has been. A good, solid haunt.”

Not one of those modern, flimsy, barely-haunted apartments on the telly, Louis expected him to add. Those new-fangled, hardly-rattle-a-drawer, tourist ghost-walk hauntings. The old man looked sage and wizened, like the person you were supposed to listen to in the fairy tale. Louis swallowed a little hard and tried to think that this was charming instead of mildly disturbing.

The old woman took an extra-large chunk of cookie and scoffed. “Don’t frighten the new boy away, he looks nice,” she said grandly, shaking the cookie chunk at both the girl and the man.

“Pay them no mind, sweetheart. So nice to have young people about for once, I’m sure it’ll do him good,” she said. Funny how people did that with these great houses, personified them.

Louis thanked her and thanked the girl and thanked the man for good measure, and picked up his post box key and went back to the new-old, not-quite-his, haunted house.

 

***

 

The house was unlike any other house Louis had lived in. Louis had never wandered around alone in a house this _big,_ for one thing. It had so many rooms, so many things, so much furniture. Rooms with the furniture draped in white sheets, and dusty chandeliers hanging from a huge downstairs ceiling, and fireplaces, and a vast wrap-around porch outside and grounds that Louis hadn’t even begun exploring. _A gem of the county,_ in the officious words of the mysterious great aunt’s solicitor. The kind of place that people like you don’t really belong, his eyes had said, looking at Louis with a bit of a sneer.

Louis was here, in the house that would soon be his, unlike the solicitor who was probably in a stuffy office downtown. So who was sneering now. Louis took a sheet off a couch on the second floor and rustled it, provocatively.

“ _Woooooo,”_ Louis hummed, a passable ghost-call, he thought.

Nothing responded. The house was, if possible, even more silent than before. Almost disdainfully silent, Louis thought. He dropped the sheet, feeling silly, and went back downstairs to keep unpacking.

 

***

 

The weird stuff started immediately. Louis set down a box of toiletries in the kitchen and came back to find a blob of toothpaste squeezing out of the tube. _Blurp,_ a mint-pile mess on the bathroom counter.

“Ugh,” he said, getting it on his fingers, wiping that away with toilet paper, ending up with minty-sticky-toilet paper on his fingers instead, and rolling his eyes to the ceiling. Must have been some pressure thing, a pressure change in the drive from the city that interacted with a weakness in the toothpaste tube and caused it to split and squirt out. Something like that.

The wood was creaky, and wind howled outside, but it was winter, so that was just the weather. The lights flickered at night, but it was an old house in the country, and when did the lights not flicker in these old, snooty houses? It was probably tradition. Louis took a note in the small notebook that Liam had gotten him as part of the _now that you are going to be a homeowner_ congratulations kit. Call an electrician at some point. Find an electrician, first. Was an electrician the person who did these things? The whole house probably needed assessments.

When Louis went to bed, he put on his plaid flannel pajamas because it felt like the temperature dropped as soon as he went upstairs, sending an uncomfortable flinch down his spine. He felt weirdly self-conscious changing in the middle of the strange bedroom, still dark even though he’d turned on the small, orange-light lamp next to the bed. He went into the bathroom instead, where the toothpaste was remaining politely in its tube.

Louis looked at himself in the mirror. His face looked back, just his own face and nothing more. Sharp, foxy, looking tired around the eyes. He’d been used to seeing it that way. Maybe with books and tea and long, quiet country walks, it would change. He was looking forward to finding out.

The house was cold, but the bed was warm. The master bedroom was beautifully appointed and there was a huge bay window that looked out into trees, and the spreading sky full of stars. Louis settled in with great satisfaction, pulling the heavy blankets up to his nose and kicking into the sheets with sock-clad feet. He’d found the ancient technology of a rubber hot water bottle in the kitchen and that had been a stellar idea, because it made the bottom of the bed toasty-warm in a way electrical heating could not rival. Louis started dropping off to sleep immediately, mind blanking into the peacefulness of the dark countryside.

For an instant, for the last instant of consciousness, he thought he heard something like the creak of a door, or the creak of a step, like someone very quiet, coming up the stairs. He didn’t have time to think about it before he was fast asleep.

 

***

 

The water in the morning was cold, and then hot, and it didn’t seem to correspond to Louis’ turning the knob. He’d woken up with a shiver in his nose and the desire to sneeze. He’d felt self-conscious about changing again which was stupid, so he’d plowed through the feeling and waltzed naked through the hallway to the bathroom, just to make a statement to--to whatever. To the house, he supposed.

“Haunted, my ass,” Louis scoffed to himself. Nobody had anything to talk about in that tiny village, so they made up stories about the big houses, rooted in the history of the families that used to live there. A pipe moaned behind the shower. Another thing for Liam’s list, then. Liam would know if an electrician was the right thing to start with.

“Not that I’m saying my ass is haunted, you understand,” Louis continued to the bar of soap. It smelled of roses and lavender, an old Christmas present from his stupid ex he’d never gotten around to using. He should’ve known that relationship was on its deathbed when he’d gotten soap as a present. He scrubbed it under his armpits, with some malice.

“I mean if any body part of mine would be haunted it would probably be my ass,” Louis mused. “It’s the best bit, the bit worth inhabiting.”

Louis slapped his own ass, as a confidence booster. The pipe creaked again, like someone clearing their throat. Maybe move that one up the maintenance list.

“You are very noisy, but I still like you,” Louis told the bathroom. The tile in it looked like it had been laid with care, a little floral design near the sink that Louis found dandy and charming. The water was proper hot now, and leaving a nice steam around the room. Louis jumped out and wrapped himself in a towel and as he did, he caught the corner of the mirror in his eye. It almost looked like there was something in the fog on the mirror, like--like a long line, like four long lines, tracing down like somebody had pulled a hand down the mirror. Louis blinked and it had melted away, just normal streaks of water on the silver surface. He blinked again, water in his eyelashes, feeling suddenly like he couldn’t quite see everything that was there to be seen, straining out the corner of his vision.

“There’s a stone door prop in the shape of a cat in this house, and there are little carved deer on the fireplace, and there’s a giant sunflower potholder in the kitchen,” Louis said, talking to himself this time. No self-respecting ghost would abide such quaintness.

  


***

 

Louis had an excellent day. After breakfast he went for a walk that turned into a near-hike because the grounds were so large, further than he could see or find the boundaries for. He’d have to see if there was a map included in the will, with the more boring paperwork he’d mostly ignored. In real life, none of it was boring. There were copses of birch trees and small bridges over creeks and there was a gazebo in the back, tucked away against a sculpted hill and covered in brambles of what had once been climbing roses. Louis picked at the branches for a while and made another note in the notebook. He’d always wanted to try gardening, now that he thought about it.

“You must have been beautiful back in the day,” he said, and a branch from a small tree nearby blew in the wind, hitting his fluffed morning hair and tangling in it. Louis laughed, because it almost felt like the grounds were a little insulted. That was ridiculous.

“Don’t be like that, love. Obviously you are still tremendously beautiful,” he said anyway, untangling the branch. Even though his feather-light, fine hair never tangled. Somehow there was a little knot in his hair now, grabbing at his fingers. Must be a humidity difference, out here in the country.

“You just deserve a little care is all I meant, you’ve been alone for too long,” Louis said, letting the branch go and looking around the grounds, sticking his hands in his pockets. A wind hit his ears, curious and exploratory and icy. Louis pulled his hat down more firmly. 

Louis finally got back to the house late in the day after a lunch in the village. He’d run into the same old couple at the tiny chippy that apparently also doubled as a bookstore, judging from the rows of books next to the dressings. Louis had ended up with more fries than he could finish and also a couple of Dorothy L. Sayers novels, recommended by the old woman. Her name was Agatha, and Louis liked her.

The lights wouldn’t turn on when he walked in. The air in the house felt a little heavy and strange in the twilight. Louis had a moment of wishing for his cozy if small apartment in the city, the cramped bedroom he'd subletted to a friend of Niall's. But he resolutely lit candles in the living room and curled up with one of the new books and a cup of tea. He had to bend close to the candlelight to read, but he managed.

Gradually, he realized there was a skittering little noise that he could barely hear, somewhere in the house. It felt like scratching somewhere, or the faint trail of scraping metal. If Louis had had a sixth sense, it would have been pricking up its ears.

Louis stared at the book’s pages.

“Agatha had great taste, recommending this one,” he said to nobody, to himself. “First night in a long time I’ve actually been able to sit down and read a book.”

There was a faint crack, and the lights turned back on, and Louis jumped, startled. Louis sat back in the chair and rubbed his eyes and thought, absently, _score._ Against what, he wasn’t sure.

 

***

 

All of the toothpaste was squeezed out of the tube. It ran around the sink in a thick, messy line.

Louis stared at it, back rigid and muscles tight. He felt his molar teeth grind together in his mouth. The bathroom was cold, so cold that when he breathed out, it misted.

He turned around, stalked out of the bathroom, goosebumps running over his skin. He went straight into the bedroom and pushed through a couple of his bags until he found a still-packed box next to the closet. He popped the box open, rummaged inside, and pulled out a fresh tube of toothpaste.

“Good thing I brought a fucking spare,” Louis said, loudly, to nobody.

 

***

 

Louis woke up to a thunderstorm. The light switch in his bedroom didn't work. He crept downstairs with a flashlight, beanie pulled firmly over his head, two scarves. The thin beam of the old flashlight made a hazy, yellow circle to show him where to step next but no further. He made his way to the kitchen, where there were at least big windows.

Rain spattered the glass. Louis jolted as a huge roll of thunder grumbled its way around the house, like a giant roaring. Storms had never felt like this in the city, like they were as big as the ocean, but on top of you instead of mildly laying down next to a beach. If he ran out into this storm, he wouldn’t even be able to see anything. He wouldn’t be able to make it to the village.

The temperature dropped. Louis felt it deep within his bones, deeper than his skin, but his skin also felt it, hairs standing on end like he’d been ran through with electricity. The flashlight stuttered, and if it had failed Louis would have run screaming through the back door, rain or no rain.

But the flashlight didn't fail. Louis turned, and turned the flashlight, and held his breath, but there was nothing there.

“I'm not afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.

Every single magnet unstuck itself from the fridge and fell to the floor in a clattering cascade.

“I'm only a little afraid of ghosts,” Louis said.

  


***

 

So maybe the house was haunted.  

Things were quiet for a few days. Louis went to the shops and got pasta and chicken and burnt his thumb on the stove. He tried a recipe instead of a microwave meal. He got more than halfway through the book, and startled awake in the night, and told himself he was imagining things, and knew he wasn’t.

And then. Louis stepped out of the shower to find a full sad-face drawn in the fog on the mirror, sideways and twisted and a perversion of the childish icon. There was no explanation, no way that had happened by itself. The temperature around him dropped five degrees, so fast that it felt like the ends of his wet hair would frost. This was the part of the horror movie that everybody knew. His brainstem was _screaming,_ a primordial gut-wail from the deepest instincts in his most animal soul.

Something inside of him snapped. Louis dropped the towel from around his waist, self-consciousness be damned, horror movie cliches could go back to hell where they came from, he was not going to be defeated in the bloody shower like somebody’s badly-written side character, fucking _vulnerability_ be damned. He leaned forward into the mirror and wiped the entire surface off with both his hands. His own face looked back at him from the cleared glass, foxy, sharp, scared, determined.

“Don’t be a baby,” he said, to himself and to the mirror and to nobody-somebody. The condensation ran down his fingers, droplets catching on the webbing between them. Louis was cold all over, freezing, but he wouldn't let himself shiver.

  


***

 

Louis had never been the kind of person to give up easily. To a fault, he’d been informed.

“Six months, though,” Liam had said. “Wow, six of them. Seems a bit odd, a request like that from someone you’ve never met. I mean what's supposed to happen in six months?”

“Six months!” Louis repeated cheerfully, even though they sounded like morons. “It’s gonna be sick, Li. It was an old family feud, or something, but like don’t look a gift horse in the ancient mouth of its dead self, you know?”

“Sometimes you say things that I don’t understand,” Liam said, and Louis gave him a one-armed hug from the side in the pub booth.

“Have you ever even spent six weeks in the country?” Liam asked. Louis scoffed, even though he hadn’t, and Liam knew that he hadn’t.

“It’s like camping but if you got to camp in a castle, that you own, your own private castle, I’ve always felt that I deserved this,” Louis said, with a showy confidence he wasn’t sure he believed.

But he knew he wanted to try. He didn’t know why, but he loved the house already. He’d loved it when he’d gone out to visit it for an afternoon and make sure it was livable, scope out what he would need for the stay. He’d loved the pretty village and the railway leading into the village, he’d loved the entire drive, all trees and rolling hills. It felt right. It felt weirdly familiar, even.

“We should go shopping before you leave,” Liam said, “Take a lot of soup and canned veggies with you. Something more than those horrible frozen pizzas you've been eating.”

Louis gave him a look. “I'm going to be ok, Li, I’m going to learn about plants and shop at the local farmer’s market,” he said.

“Just don't like the thought of you having to be alone for six months,” Liam sighed.

“I know, it’s gonna be awful,” Louis said. It was gonna be great. He was looking forward to it _so much._  

“It’s not that I’m worried,” his mum had said, who was clearly worried, “It’s just that I want to make sure you’ve thought this through.”

Louis had gone home with a couple of boxes, to pick up the heavy blankets from the closet and check in on the girls and give everybody hugs, and apparently, to get lectured at. He picked up an old sketchbook, a thing he hadn’t even looked at since high school, and threw it in the box, too. He probably still had some pens somewhere, or he could get some before he left.

“I have thought this through. It’s actually going to be really good timing, taking a break from work right now,” Louis said. “I’ve been wanting a break.” Needing, more like. Needing something different, at least.

His mum sighed, crossing her arms across her chest. _Don’t say it,_ Louis thought, right before she said it.

“I just hope you’re not running away because of the breakup,” she said. Louis rested his hands on the edge of the box and looked her hard in the eyes.

“Oh my god, I’m not,” he said, for the millionth, zillionth time.

“You can’t let yourself get so shaken up by a boy,” his mum said. Louis shook his head. “I just want the best for you, baby. You’ve always gotten so attached, so fast.”

“So this will be great,” Louis said, plastering a smile on his face. He spied an old set of pencils and erasers and slid them out from underneath an old board game. “Gonna get real attached to the TV, probably. Nothing to get attached to in the country except a load of giant trees.”

  


***

  


Louis wasn’t going to be scared into giving up this house. It could be haunted, fine. Louis was more than a match for some ghost, and that’s all there was to it.  What were ghosts even, anyway? Nothing more than incorporeal assholes, sticking around past their expiration date, looking for kicks. Louis had dealt with enough corporeal assholes. Louis wasn’t going to get _pranked_ out of his house. Louis was the one who did the pranking. If this ghost had gone to school with Louis, he would’ve known that.

Half his socks disappeared. Louis wore mismatched pairs and then found the orphan socks floating balled up in the toilet. 

Louis didn’t know if the ghost was male. Gender was a construct even in actual life so it seemed impolitic to assume it in the afterlife. The ghost still felt like a he. Louis didn’t know why.

His luggage flipped itself inside out and the bookmark fell out of his mystery novel and scooted under the couch. Louis tried to boil water for tea, and he would hear it boil, but then as soon as he turned around to look at the kettle, it would be cold as ice.

Sometimes things would feel normal and mundane and sometimes Louis’ stomach would flip and his brain would scream _RUN_ in flashy, capital letters and his heart would yell _I AGREE_ and he would have to sit down on the floor and hug his knees and just refuse. He slept less, but he still slept. He didn’t think the ghost wanted to harm him. Wanted to scare him, but not harm him.

Louis made tea in the microwave, glaring the whole time.

“Trying to take away a man’s tea is depraved,” he said. “Is that why you’re still around? Is it because you were soulless in your life, and you were condemned to suffer here for eternity in penance? You’re not doing a very good job.”

Three boxes of tea fell out of the pantry, spilling curls of leaves and florets out over the floor in a delicate fan pattern.

 

***

 

Now that Louis was paying attention, the ghost definitely felt like a he. It felt like a lot of things, including like it was getting stronger, which was alarming.

It--he--he had habits. He creaked on the stairs at predictable times during the night, but things were quiet in the morning. Maybe he wasn’t a morning person (did you bring habits, like gender, into the afterlife with you?). He had pretty clear annoyances. He hated it when Louis watched sports, for one, because the TV worked fine until Louis put on the match and then it dissolved into static. He tried again, a couple of times, and each time the static got clearer and sharper and more annoyed until it was a slow motion drag of pixels across the face of one of the players, like getting flipped the bird by your own television screen. 

Louis sat back in the armchair, and picked up the book. “Kind of wanted to finish this,” he said, sighing. “You know, didn’t ask to get banished to a country house for six months, but I at least thought I could catch up on reading.”

The lights flickered, like they usually did, but they didn’t actually go off this time. Louis withdrew his hand from where it had been hovering over the matchbox, ready to light the candle. The lights got stronger, slowly and reluctantly. Louis stuck his face back into the book, a small smile on his face.

 

***

 

“You were the only person I could think of,” Louis said. Zayn’s face was fuzzy and warped and luminous through the unreliable Facetime connection. Louis was crouched over his phone in the gazebo outside, where the wifi didn’t work and the data was bad, but he had an intuition that he could have a more private phone call here. It was raining, because of course it was.

 “You need to _talk to a_ _ghost,_ and I’m the person you thought of?” Zayn spluttered. His fuzzy face looked skeptical.

“You’re the only one of us who’s like, spiritual,” Louis said, waving a hand. Louis had nothing to go on, here. He wasn’t religious and he didn’t believe in magic. He wasn’t even superstitious except maybe for that one year when he’d developed an elaborate pre-football game ritual, and he hadn’t really _believed_ in that, not like this. The ghost, he believed in.

Zayn rubbed his face. “I have no idea, and you're insane, I thought you'd lose your mind being alone there but I didn't think it would happen so fast,” he said.

“Just try,” Louis said. “This is my bloody house, you know. I really like it here. I want to figure it out.”

“Your house? I thought you said you were going to sell the place as soon as you could. It’s like a mausoleum even without ghosts. You could die out there, and nobody would even know, that’s probably what happened to the ghosts,” Zayn said.

Zayn couldn’t see the artfully carved bench that Louis was sitting on, or the long, thoughtful spread of lawn between the gazebo and the house. He couldn’t look out into the freezing rain and imagine this place in the spring, transmuting into rich green and speckled with flowers.

“Yeah, well. Can’t sell a haunted house, can you?” Louis said. “And there’s only one ghost. A minor issue.”  

“Apparently you can will it to some poor chump,” Zayn chortled. “Maybe you’re cursed, Lou. Has the ghost frozen your boxers in an ice tray, yet?”

“Shut up, don’t give him ideas,” Louis hissed, looking around. Of course there was nothing to see, not that there would be, because ghosts were invisible.

“I want to talk to him,” Louis said, scooting back in to the phone. He was bracing it with his hands wrapped in his long sweater sleeves, because it was freezing out here, and he made a mental note to get some new sweaters. Agatha would know where. At the bookstore/chippy, she’d invited him to bridge night. Maybe he would go.

“To whom?” Zayn asked.

“To the ghost, christ, Zayn, pay attention,” Louis said.

“Thought I was supposed to ‘shut up,’” Zayn said, making air quotes. Louis put his face right up to the screen. If they were in person he’d be putting his face up in Zayn’s right now, intruding in his personal space beyond all appropriate boundaries. Zayn _hated_ that.

“How do you know talking to him is gonna help?” Zayn asked, in his _please be reasonable and get out of my face_ voice. “If he’s trying to drive you away, maybe you’re just gonna confirm his bad opinion of you.”

“Excuse you, I am inherently charming,” Louis said, “I’m a delight. A poltergeist should be so lucky to have me to...polter on.”

“Your last roommate said, and I quote, ‘if I don’t move out I’m going to jail for homicide, and you can tell them my motivation was the dishes.’ If I recall correctly,” Zayn said.

“Well then I’m sure if we actually talked, I could convince him to shuffle off this mortal coil, or whatnot. Either charm or annoyance, those are my two strengths. How do you talk to ghosts?” Louis insisted. “You’re spiritual. Tell me.”

Zayn made a face. “A guy does tarot as a joke one bloody time--”

“You were right,” Louis said. He’d made fun of it at the time but Zayn had been _right_ , had pulled out three cards and his whole face had gone pale and he’d looked over at Niall and said, _go to the fucking doctor,_ and Niall had, and everything was benign and it was all fine now, but still. It had burned into Louis’ memory, and it floated back now. 

Zayn put his fingertips together, looked serious, or at least looked like he was indulging Louis.

“I cannot imagine you being quiet, so what makes you think he doesn’t already hear you talking at him?” 

Louis considered. “He can hear me,” he agreed, that much was obvious. “I suppose what I need is a way for me to hear him.”

“Beyond _wanton destruction,_ ” Louis added, looking back at the house and yelling it. Zayn flinched away from the microphone, the screen lagging a few seconds.

 “Z, should I do, like, a spell?”

“What am I, a wizard? What about a ouija board?” Zayn suggested.

“Those are for kids,” Louis objected.

“So is believing in ghosts,” Zayn said. “How about you combine them, get soused, do a spell, and pull out the ouija board. But spells are like, to summon them. I dunno if you’d need to summon somebody who lives in your own house already. Light a nice scented candle.”

“Candles are gross. Maybe I should though, do a spell,” Louis said. Just to be thorough.

“Maybe it’s like the ghostly equivalent of yelling somebody’s first, middle, and last name.” 

“You should draw a pentagram,” Zayn said, “There, that’s it, that’s all that I know, we’ve exhausted my spiritual wisdom. I know that because I had a fling with that goth kid that one time. Thought he was a witch, he did. I said I thought men were warlocks, you know, and he threw a crystal at me. Dick.”

“Ew, the one with the runny eyeliner and the huge ear things,” Louis said, wrinkling his nose. 

“Gauges. Now you shut up,” Zayn said, “Like yours have been any better.”

Louis couldn’t argue with that.

“Any cute boys in the country? Gonna pick up a farmer?” Zayn asked, easily distracted from the supernatural.

“Can’t find a soul under a hundred years old,” Louis said, “But the valiant struggle continues.

“Your aura looks off,” Zayn said, squinting, “You're like an old cat when you're single. You spit at everything.”

“Some people like cats,” Louis said, as icy as his bedroom when the ghost got there. “Like you can see _auras_ through FaceTime, thought you were denying that you were the spiritual one.”

“I'm denying I know spells, or shit all about ghosts, but I know you.”

Louis pursed his lips and changed the subject, enough of all that or he'd have Zayn trying to get him on whatever flipping hookup app he was using these days. Zayn didn't realize that not everybody had the kind of impenetrable attractiveness he had.

“Ask the warlock if he knows any spells, and mail me a ouija board.”  

“I’m not texting my ex about spells. Spell, spell-bootycalling, or whatever,” Zayn said, horrified.

“Zayn, this is _important,”_ Louis said, because he knew that his friends were good people. Zayn sighed, which was close enough to agreeing.

“Bet the ghost is a hundred years old, maybe you need to bang him to exorcise him,” Zayn said, snidely. “Maybe it’s like, one of those possession deals.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’ll keep working the farmer angle,” Louis said. He didn’t like to think of that, how old the ghost might be, how long it might have been around. The ghost must have been an alive person once, that was the general idea of ghosts, wasn’t it. Maybe he had been some snooty lord, or an old butler. He just couldn’t picture it, and he definitely didn’t like the idea of living with that. For some reason, he liked to think of the ghost as more like them, close to his own age. It was insane that that felt better, so he didn’t share it.

“Hey Zayn,” Louis said, “What did the ghost do when he went to the theatre?”

Zayn was silent for a long moment, looking agonized. “What,” he said finally.

“He booed!” Louis shouted. Zayn hung up.

  
  


***

  


It turned out that pentagrams were more for demons. Louis was certain the ghost wasn’t a demon. Louis closed the browser window and felt a little bit guilty about it, like he’d been insulting the ghost, who was annoying and ridiculous and a drama queen but not, you know, not like an evil demon or summat.

He just wanted Louis _gone._

After the sad face drawing, the ghost had left a capital-letter _NO_ and the next day, a _REPENT,_ diagonal across the mirror with droplets shivering through it. He executed the perfectly-timed temperature drop as soon as Louis got out of the shower too, but Louis was expecting it so he’d simply grabbed the thick, enormous towel he’d picked up from the village home goods/garden shop and huddled under it.

“Repent of _what,”_ Louis had snapped, “Repent about being the cutest thing to walk into your rotten old house in the past two hundred years? Repent about the extremely nice table runner that my mum made me bring? She found one that matched these ancient, ridiculous curtains down in the dining room. Who even needs a dining room for twenty people? I repent _nothing!”_

There was a sulky silence. Louis wrapped the towel around his waist, nodded at his face in the mirror, and for a quick second he thought he saw the flash of somebody else’s eyes, narrowed and suspicious and squinting, but it was nothing.

“Ruddy poltergeist can’t even be specific,” Louis muttered. “What, get that off a Bible? Unbelievable.” He went down to make more tea.

The blankets were dragged off the bed in the middle of the night and Louis woke up with a sick swoop in his stomach and a cold rubber water bottle rammed against his shin. When he touched the cap, he pulled his fingers away, hissing, because there was a rim of ice on the bottle. A yelp escaped his lips. Louis felt a definite crackle of enjoyment in the room, at that one. 

“I’ll line this place with space heaters,” Louis threatened, “And then it’ll burn down in the night and you’ll be responsible. I’ll haunt the smoldering ruins with you, forever, and you’ll never be rid of me.”

The blankets stayed on the bed after that.

The ghost was sulking, Louis thought. He didn’t leave any more traces on the bathroom mirror which oddly disappointed Louis. It’s not like Louis wanted to be terrified or anything, but he’d vaguely started looking forward to the mirror messages.

  


***

 

He might have known that the ghost was just waiting for the right opportunity.

Louis had developed a love for the kitchen already. In the morning the kitchen was beautiful. Light streamed in from the large windows, highlighting the warm wood of the massive table, the gleaming metal of the stove and the intricately-carved cabinets. It also highlighted the mugs.

Louis stood in the doorway and gaped. From the exact center of the kitchen rose a perfectly straight line of mugs, stacked together without an inch between them, from the floor to the ceiling. The last mug on the top of the pile was pressed, with a perfect seal, against the ceiling.

Louis felt the now-familiar sensation that meant the ghost was near--the hairs on his arm standing up in the cold. Death, threat, fear.

“Honestly,” he said, clearing his throat, morning-raspy, “Honestly, this is fucking impressive.”

The air stilled, and turned the tiniest hint of _warm._

“Did this take you very long? All night?” Louis continued. He was losing his damn mind, of course. Everything up to and including this was perfectly calibrated to make him lose his mind, but at a certain point you just had to take a step back and notice things like the way even every handle on the mugs was pointed the same direction. 

The breeze rustled around him. There was no window open.

Louis put his hand up to his face and just cracked up into it, laughing so hard he got tears in the corners of his eyes. It was just…five weeks ago the only thing he'd been able to do was mope around in his apartment eating post-breakup ice cream and now here he was, barefoot in his torn college joggers battling for dominion over an ancient country house with an intelligence from beyond the pale. And the intelligence was winning.

The floor creaked. He almost thought it sounded _concerned._

“I couldn’t get these down if I tried,” Louis huffed, through laughter, “There aren’t anymore mugs left, are there? They fit perfectly. Oh my god. All right then, you win today, no tea for me.”

  


***

 

The weather was warmer that day, so Louis took his old sketchbooks onto the porch. It felt like it might be his way of celebrating the ghost’s win that morning, getting out of the house a little.

Louis hadn’t drawn in a long time, but he picked a set of small trees that he could see, and tried it out. He filled the page, and the next page. Birds, leaves, the shape of the column on the porch. He took his shoe off, even though it was a bit cold in just socks, and sketched that. His fingers hurt from the press of the pen, out of practice, but it felt deeply satisfying to think in something that wasn’t words.

The house was quiet. Once, the front door had started swinging, but slow and gentle, and it might have been a genuine breeze. Louis had half-wondered if his pens were going to rise up and stab him, but maybe the ghost was exhausted from lifting all the mugs.

His phone buzzed, jolting him out of a reverie about spirits and their motivations and whether there was a kind of TV they liked better than sports.

 

 _Yo,_ Zayn said, _I talked to The Witch Ex and it was awful_

_So thx_

_But he sent me a few references_

_They’re all like library books and shit_

_So I’m copying them and sending them to you with a ouija board_

 

 _I love you forever!!!!!!!_ Louis wrote back.

_I’m pretty sure I’m close to a breakthrough, so send fast_

 

_Close to a breakdown? Sounds about right_

_Hit up the one pub in that village. Snog a preacher’s son and cause a scandal._

_Finding the most pink ouija board in the universe for you_

 

 _You get me,_ Louis wrote back, and sent Zayn his post office box address.

He’d left the sketchbook spread out, and a breeze was rustling the pages. They flipped open one by one, Louis’ little scribbles revealed each time, like a person was sitting there turning pages.

 

***

 

Louis broke ten mugs disassembling the ceramic tower of doom in the kitchen. But the pot of water boiled the first time.

 

***

 

Louis turned the TV on, carefully. The lights held steady, and nobody shrieked. It was some boring news show.

“So I thought to myself, maybe you don't care for electronics,” Louis said, hoping it wasn't considered rude in ghostly circles, such comments. “Maybe they mess with your aura." 

A cabinet door in the kitchen batted itself open and closed. Louis fancied that it sounded like it was disagreeing, but not as irritated as usual. Intrigued, maybe.

“Let's try this,” he said with his tongue between his teeth. “I'll flip channels, and you can hate them if you want, but if you find something you like, give like, three flickers.”

A house repair show was a no go, and the ghost was apparently so offended by a golf tournament that he not only made a ragged spike of static drag across the screen, the TV also emitted a high-pitched, distressed whine.

“Ok, cool, cool,” Louis said, flipping rapidly, “Just thought it might be peaceful seeing as you live on what is essentially a fancy golf course with a house.” 

On the mantel, an old candle holder fell over on its side, then rolled down the mantel and landed perfectly in a heap of ash near the fireplace. A cloud of dark ash bloomed in the air, and Louis coughed.

“Dramatic,” he muttered. But then the TV was flickering -- the channel had landed on a fashion show. Tall, angular men in bizarre suit jackets strutted down a catwalk.

“Really?” Louis asked. The TV flickered three times again, insistently. Definitely not some old butler, then. Louis threw himself down in the chair to watch and learn about couture. He felt a slinking warmth around his ankles, a phantom catlike feeling.

  


***

  


Bridge night was thursdays, in the parlor of the small parish hall, and Louis was definitely the only person under seventy there, and he was definitely loving it.

“Now don’t worry,” Agatha had counseled, “Just follow my lead.” 

She was taking Louis on as a partner, against a pair of sweet-looking old ladies that introduced themselves as Christine and Martha. Christine was a tall, strong-boned woman in her late eighties who pulled off a dark blue denim jumpsuit in a way that Louis could only admire--she’d been one of the few female pilots in the war, Agatha had revealed. Very against the rules, Christine had added, with a wink, but people could turn a blind eye when the chips were down and you knew your way around an engine. Martha was a subdued, tiny woman nearly drowned in a gingham dress, and she was mind-destroyingly good at bridge.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” Louis exclaimed to Agatha, for the third time. He was causing them to lose, and badly. She shook her head at him.

“No mind,” she chirped.

“Have you had enough biscuits?” Christine asked.

“Stop feeding the boy,” Martha said, “You’re just trying to distract us from the game.”

Christine reached over the table to pat Martha’s hand, placating, and Louis tried to hide his laughter behind his cards. There were several other groups set up for bridge night, but these ladies were quickly becoming his favorite people in the village. He tried manfully to get through the biscuits that Christine loaded onto his plate when he wasn’t looking, and asked them about the village.

“That’s my niece, runs the post office cafe,” Christine said proudly. “She’s a right pretty one, don’t you think?”

Louis nodded politely. Oh, lord; he’d hoped that the lack of young people around the village would spare him from this, but Christine was turning a calculating eye to him. He should’ve known the biscuits were a warning sign. They always were. Louis was excellent with old women, and it was his curse.

“Have you got a pretty girl of your own, then, Louis?” Christine asked, and Martha muttered over her cards. 

“No, ma’am,” Louis said politely, as Agatha pulled the biscuit tin out of Christine’s reach.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Tina, the boy’s gay as the day is long,” she said, definitively.

Louis yelped, and Agatha smiled at him, an angelic old lady. The next table over looked up in surprise.

“I mean, yes,” Louis yelled, “But I did not expect you to say that,”

Agatha _tsk-d_. “I am observant. We may be far from the city here, young man, but we know things.”

Louis was laughing into his biscuit plate. He loved Agatha, he loved everything.

“Yes, my daughter's boy is gay, and a very good boy he is,” Martha said, quietly, into her cards.

“Now Martha, I thought he was bisexual,” Agatha said. Martha tilted her head to the side and considered.  

“Could well be. My memory is not what it was. Either way, love is love and all,” she concluded.

“Absolutely,” Christine said, “I have a nephew! He’s two towns over now, but Louis dear, he is ever so handsome. Assuming you have no pretty boy at home, then.”

Louis hid his face in his hands, felt the tips of his ears going red. Agatha batted her hand of cards at Christine, who looked unashamed.

“Leave the child _alone,”_ she said, “He’s got more than enough on his plate handling the big house.”

“Oh my god,” Louis said. He felt weak. “Actually, great change of subject, I wanted to ask if you knew anything about the history of the house.”

Agatha looked sharp-eyed and curious. But that was her general expression. “Have you been settling in, Louis?”

It probably only felt loaded because Louis knew that nothing could be settled in a house with a spirit prone to fits of throwing shoes around. Louis shrugged with one shoulder, trying to look casual and feeling weirdly guilty. Here under the friendly prosaic lights of the parish hall, it felt a little bit risky to think of the ghost. A little bit like the kind of thing that got people sent to the asylum, or exorcised. He was feeling _protective_ of the ghost, he realized.

“Mum and I didn’t really know my aunt,” he said, “Or the place. We didn’t even know that this house existed, so it’s been a surprise all around. Dunno who lived there before?”

“Styles,” Martha said, and the other two women nodded. She’d said the word like Louis should know what it meant.

“Oh?” he asked politely. Martha folded one hand over the other and looked pointedly at Agatha, who handed her a new biscuit. Martha dunked it carefully into her tea, took a dainty bite, and looked back at Louis.

“The Styles family lived there,” Martha said, “Before your aunt. There aren’t any of them left.”  

“Terrible thing,” Agatha murmured. “The family was here for ages but the last Styles, the father was--he wasn’t a good man. Only one son, and he did his best to--well, there were stories.”

“This was a long time ago,” Martha said, “Things were wilder here, before the war. Parents were the law, with children.”

Louis felt like he’d swallowed a glass of ice water. Was he sharing the house with an abusive, unquiet spirit? Was this the reason the ghost hadn't moved on?

“Now this was back when I was a girl,” Agatha said, a far-away look on her face. “And really, I heard most of it from my mother, but the Styles family, they always had a bit of magic about them. The mother was beautiful, and so kind, the son was like her. The story she always told me was that the boy had fallen in love, against the father’s wishes, and that he had plans to run away. There was an awful fight, one night.”

“There was a storm,” Martha said. Louis was on the edge of his seat, he realized, gripping the biscuit plate. “And a lightning strike.”

“It struck the _house_?” Louis asked. Martha nodded. Louis couldn’t imagine that house withstanding a lightning blast, or the fire afterward.

“The story always was that the family had magic about them,” Agatha repeated, hushed and considering, almost to herself. “And if the boy was anything like Anne, well. Lightning struck in the master bedroom, through the window, where they both were. The house didn’t even catch flame.”

Louis could see it in his mind’s eye, suddenly. A raging storm, covering the grounds (early summer, he thought, although he didn’t know why he thought that, the trees outside thick with leaves, the smell of apple blossoms, roses in a bud, not yet in full bloom). The threat, cold and dark and controlling, a shadow that had hung over the house for an entire life. The determination, electric and fire, to escape. The house had almost felt like it _knew,_ was leaning into the thunder, the window opening for him right when he needed it. _You’ll leave this house over my dead body. I’d rather be dead, then._

There was a chattering from the next table, the game over, a scuttle of chairs as the elderly players went to refill cups of lemonade and acquire new biscuits. Louis let out his breath in a sudden puff.

“Well there, silly old stories, look at us, turned into our grandmothers,” Agatha said, bright and sonsy and normal. Christine nodded, and Martha looked unreadable. Louis laid his hand down on the white lace tablecloth. Enough ghost stories for tonight.

“I’m entirely lost,” he said, “I don’t even remember the rules.”

“We’ll keep you about for your good looks, it’s all right,” Agatha said merrily.

Louis got recipes, and a thorough schooling about how to care for pipes during the winter, and completed the evening by causing Agatha to lose at least three more times, and was invited back to bridge night. All in all, a success.

“Oh, Louis, dear,” said Christine as he was putting on his coat, “This came for you down at the post office.”

She held up a long, flat package. Louis frowned at her. “Is that my mail?”

“Her niece is the postal mistress,” Agatha sighed, “So she takes it on herself to deliver our packages, sometimes.”

Christine smiled winningly. Louis shook his head ruefully and took the package from Zayn. The ouija board. The ghost felt real again, and Louis was going back to the big, empty house with its long, dark passageways. His hands were suddenly a little trembly, and he hoped nobody noticed, but the ladies were still busy cleaning the table and putting on coats.

“Agatha,” Louis tried, “That family, the Styles? What were their names? What was the boy’s name?”

Agatha pursed her lips, thinking. “Can’t recall the boy’s,” she said slowly, looking at Louis. Louis fought the sensation that she could see right through him, and knew far more than she was letting on. He stared back.

“But the father, his name was Henry,” she said, nodding.

“Thanks,” Louis said.

  


***

 

Once he got back to the house, Louis set the ouija board aside. He didn’t try it or look at the spells that Zayn had photocopied from weird library books. He didn’t know if he wanted to, honestly, after hearing the story. It had scared him in a way that missing socks and icy bathrooms hadn’t been able to. It felt like nothing he knew how to handle, a sad heavy history in this house.

Zayn had sent five different scented candles in various undecipherable flavors like _smooth sandalwood_ and _iced pumpkin_.

 _Come to the dark side, we smell better,_ Zayn had scrawled on a note. Louis had snorted and set them aside. But several nights later, keen to dispel the feeling of unease that had hung over him since hearing the story, he pulled them out and lit them all in a row on the kitchen table. He’d decided to make soup off of a recipe that Agatha had given him, and it was going pretty well: a thick stew of lentils was making the kitchen smell homey, and the temperature had remained normal.

His phone ran, unexpectedly--Liam would still be at work, and Zayn usually Facetimed, and Niall was off with his girlfriend on vacation. Louis had just talked to his mum last night.

The number didn’t have a name saved to it anymore, but Louis recognized it anyway.

“Paul?” he answered, with a hesitation in his voice that he couldn’t smooth out.

“Lou,” Paul said. He sounded just the same as ever, and it sent a thick pulse of missing through Louis, damnit. By the end of it neither of them had disagreed with the breakup but--but that didn’t mean Louis wasn’t reserving the right to be terribly cut up about it. 

“Why are you calling,” Louis said, hitting the speakerphone to free his hands because otherwise the soup would overboil, and Agatha’s recipe did not deserve that, exes or no exes.

“What are you doing, Lou? You home?” Paul asked. He sounded strange, voice up and down, and there was pulsing noise in the background, and _why was he calling._

“Kind of,” Louis said, “Kind of a new home, I guess.”

“You didn’t move,” Paul said, “Somebody woulda told me. Besides, you hate change.”

“I don’t hate change. Why are you calling?” Louis repeated. The soup had to simmer now, and he had to chop the tomatoes into it, kept them from getting soggy when you added them last, Agatha had said. Louis liked learning things about food. He liked the idea that he could be someone whose food was worth taking care over.

“Well tell me where your new place is, let’s have a drink,” Paul said.

“Christ, Paul, are you drunk? Are you fucking bootycalling me?” Louis asked. Obviously Paul was drunk. He was slurring on the phone. 

“Come on, babe, when have you ever been averse to a bit of fun?” Paul’s voice rasped, and it made Louis curl his lip in disgust.

“Hang up, Paul, I can’t believe you drunk dialed me,” he snapped, unable to do it himself because both of his hands were full and covered in tomato.

“Don’t get high and mighty with me,” Paul said, sliding from flirtatious and horny-drunk right into mean. He sounded vicious, accusatory, and it sent an echo through Louis’ worst memories from two months ago.

“You’re the one never lets anyone get close, can’t blame me for thinking you’d be down for no strings. Whatever, Lou, you should be grateful somebody had it in them to miss you at all.”

Louis lunged across the kitchen, miraculously avoided the candles, and hung up the phone. A tiny slab of tomato dripped off his hand onto the screen.

“Fuck,” Louis said. He wiped the phone off on his pants, and measured the tomatoes into the soup, and blinked away a couple of tears.

“Fuck,” he said, into the soup. The fragrant steam of it curled up gently, stroked his cheeks. It was just crap, that was all, just crap to be blindsided with that. He rubbed his eyes roughly, sniffed into the pot. It wasn’t even missing Paul. He’d known for a long time before they broke up that that wasn’t going anywhere, and it would fade. It was the way that even drunk and mean and stupid, Paul could manage to say the one thing that slipped through all of Louis’ armor and went right to the core of his fears.  

Something banged in the pantry, and Louis jumped. A jar was slowly rolling out of the pantry, dragging on the tile floor. Louis looked at it for a long second, and then went over to retrieve it. It was hot chocolate mix.

Louis picked up the jar and held it between his palms. “That,” he cleared his throat, a little thick from the tears, “That’s a really good idea.”

Louis felt a warm stirring of air around his temples, so light it almost wasn’t there. There was a rustle from the pantry, and he took a few tentative steps forward to see what it was. A bag of marshmallows had fallen off the shelf.  

  


***

 

Louis went through two cups of excellent hot chocolate and switched to wine, and finally, went up to the bedroom to set up the ouija board. It was just as pink as Zayn had promised, and also plastic. It looked completely ridiculous and like it might fall into pieces if Louis pressed too hard. He re-lit all five of the candles in Zayn’s honor, and secretly, to feel like Zayn was somehow present as backup. In case this all went wrong.

Louis was more than halfway to drunk, and he felt warm, so the ghost must not be particularly present yet. He squinted at the page of spells. _For the summoning of the departed,_ it said in loopy writing, and then a load of Latin. Another one was _To bind and keep the portals of hellspeech open,_ which was apparently supposed to open a terrible-looking portal into hell, complete with horned beasts and writhing peasants. Louis sighed. He could just call Paul back if he wanted a portal to hellspeech.

On the bottom of the stack, Zayn had put a sticky note on one of the pages. _IDEK, Stupid Warlock didn’t recommend this, but it jumped out at me when I was copying,_ he’d written. Louis squinted at the page, drinking more wine. 

_Toward the protection of wandering souls,_ it read. Whatever that meant. And more Latin. The graphic was some kind of woodcut illustration. It looked like two swallows, hovering like curving hands over a small, boyish figure, and there was a tree in the background, an appletree. There was something about it--something that tugged at Louis’ chest.

Louis took a giant, fortifying chug of wine. It had been a long time since grammar school Latin, but the Latin of the protection spell was pretty straightforward, and he muddled through it. On the last word, the five candles flickered, and Louis’ gaze snapped to them. It smelled a bit like Zayn’s cologne. Louis was definitely drunk.

He put his fingertips on the planchette.

“Don’t be the evil dad,” he whispered, “Don’t be that bastard.”

“Ghost,” he tried, and fuck, he had no idea what to say, really. This was the bit where the ghost was supposed to do the talking. “Err, please--please speak to me?” 

Nothing. Nothing but the faint sound of the candle flame, and a bit of wind outside, normal and unsupernatural.

Louis closed his eyes. “Come on,” he said, “You must have so much to say.”

There was a shiver, a shudder, a frisson under his fingertips. Louis wanted to open his eyes but for some reason, gut instinct told him not to. A wind whipped around him, lifted the hair off his forehead. But it wasn’t cold, it was warm, it was like a gust from an oven, a summer breeze.

The planchette moved. Louis’ eyes snapped open, tracking it.

 

_H_

 

“Oh, fuck,” Louis said, fear running down his back. But the next letter wasn’t an E.

 

_A_

 

_R_

 

_R_

 

_Y_

 

“Harry?” Louis whispered, “Are you Harry?”

 

_W_

 

_H_

 

_O_

 

_A_

 

_R_

 

_E_

 

_Y_

 

_O_

 

_U_

 

Louis laughed, giddy and drunk and crazy and definitely, definitely full of magic. Of course, he’d never said his own name.

“I’m Louis,” he said, “I’m Louis. It’s really nice to finally meet you, Harry.”

 

***

 

The planchette had spun out from under his fingertips and fully off the board after Louis said his name. He felt disappointed, but also alive with astonishment. The room felt full of life, full of warmth. The house felt _different._ Louis had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he _felt it,_ the conspiratorial wrapping of rapport with the spirit. They were both pleased. Louis had cracked something open that hadn’t been open in a long time. The ghost was getting stronger, was getting more real.  

Louis was exhausted, so he blew out the candles, but kept them near his bed. Funny how the mingled scents really did smell like Zayn, like a weird lingering protection, which was nice in the big bedroom that had seen so many things. Louis supposed he was going to have to apologize on the whole candle front.

That night, Louis dreamed. 

He dreamed of a long, rolling plain, rich green, speckled with flowers. It was familiar, because he’d grown up there. He’d always been there, hadn’t he? The air smelled like apple blossoms.

Then there was a boy. This wasn’t the first time that Louis had dreamed of a beautiful boy, but this boy--this boy. He was sitting in the grass, and his hair moved in the wind, chocolate and long and curly. It was like a painting, and Louis moved through it carefully, his bare feet sliding through the grass. He was almost surprised when it didn’t smear into paint. It was so vivid.

He could only see the boy’s back, his curved shoulders, his thoughtful posture, looking out on the grass. It was the lawn, Louis realized, the lawn of the house between the gazebo and the porch. He knew it like the back of his hand.

“Hello,” he said, soft. The boy turned. Louis didn’t know his face--his perfect face, the planes of it clicking into Louis’ mind, the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen--but he knew the way that he _felt._

“Hello, Harry,” he said. The boy’s face split into a smile, wide and magnetic and wondering.

 “Louis,” he breathed, “How am I here, Louis? How are you here?”

Louis closed the rest of the way between them and sat down in the grass. Harry was warm, and he smelled of apples. He was taller than Louis, and his eyes were clear green and brilliant and probing. Louis couldn’t stop staring.

“I don’t know,” he said, “But I love this place. I love this place, with you.”

“I used to sit here,” Harry said. He’d turned his face back towards the lawn. Louis couldn’t make out the house in the distance, but he felt at peace, it didn’t matter. In the back of his mind he thought, this had to be a dream--this wasn’t--how had they gotten here? How was Harry here? 

“There were roses on the gazebo,” Louis said, “But they’re all just brambles now, all grey.”

Harry put his chin on one hand. Louis wanted to get closer, to examine every detail of his face. His jaw was long, and strong, and it looked stubborn. Louis rather liked that.

“They’re grey in the winter,” Harry said, “But they’re not actually dead. They’ll come back in the spring.” He sounded confident. He sounded different, a funny accent, old. He sounded like someone who wasn’t used to forming words. He sounded the way that Louis’ sketches felt when Louis forgot about time while he drew and only woke up later, looked at the paper and felt like he’d captured something real. Louis nodded.

“I can feel you,” Harry said, suddenly sharp and joyful in a way that almost hurt. Louis’ knee had slipped down in the grass and it was pressing into Harry’s thigh. Harry looked like he was about to cry.

“I can _feel,”_ he marveled. Then he reached out a hand, and cupped Louis’ cheek. His hand was dry and warm and large, and Louis felt his own heartbeat leap up to pound into Harry’s palm. This was a dream. This wasn’t real. This was crazy. Harry was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Agatha said you were in love,” Louis said. His voice sounded hoarse, out of place in the dream. Harry’s eyes suddenly looked distant, and unhappy, but he didn’t move his hand. Louis felt sorry, so sorry, but he didn’t know for what.

 “He looked like you,” Harry said.

“I'm sorry,” Louis said, “Is he…”

“It was a long time ago,” Harry said, and old eyes looked out of his young face. “It's been so long since I've had someone to talk to.”

His fingers were moving on Louis’ face, tracing a path.

Louis didn't stop to think, he just felt, he knew. He leaned forward, and he kissed Harry. It was sweet and slow, and then Harry blinked at Louis, and wrapped both hands into Louis’ hair, and pulled him close, and kissed him back, deep and tender and destroying.

Real or not, it was the best kiss of Louis’ life. It was like he knew Harry. It was like they knew everything that they needed to know about each other.

“You’re Louis,” Harry whispered, not letting go. Louis smiled, helplessly. “Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, I am.”

“Louis,” Harry said, “Please find me.”

  


***

 

Louis startled into waking. He was in his bedroom. Of course he was in his bedroom. He'd never left. It was only a dream, it hadn't been real.

He sat up in bed. It was just him in all of his ordinariness in a house that creaked too much, kept too many secrets. Right now, it felt like nothing more than a pile of wood.

“No,” Louis said, “No, this isn’t fair, I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t--I don’t _know._ Are you even real?”  

There was the smallest creak, and then an entire section of wall blew out from across the room, exploded in a shattering of wood and old dust particles, slamming down on the cold, hard floor and revealing a hole on the other side.

“Jesus _christ_ ,” Louis swore, startled back into the headboard behind him, smacking the back of his head with a nasty _whump._

The hairs on the back of his neck, long and starting to curl on the nape, lifted in a soft, apologetic breeze.

“Yeah, I’m fine, can't do anything small can you,” Louis said without thinking as he scrambled out of bed, turned on the lamp and started walking toward the hole, picking his way with care through the splintered wood. Once he actually owned the bloody place he was going to have to get so many repairs done, he thought, before blinking and thinking, _you just reassured a fucking ghost._ And it felt like the ghost was relieved.

“Is this as weird for you, as it is for me?” Louis wondered out loud. Had it been a dream? Was he tricking himself, with the ouija board and the candles and being drunk? Was he losing his mind?

He pulled the planks aside and knelt down. Nestled into the thicker foundational wall behind the paneling was a metal box. Louis crouched forward, careful of the splintering edges of the hole, and got his fingers around its small wire handle. The metal felt terribly cold to the touch and gritty, like it was very old; the surface was uneven and spotted. The box had a resonance, a kind of alarming buzz that triggered some old instinct deep in Louis’ lizard brain, a kind of _go away_ and _this is creepy shit_ energy.

“I live here, this is my house,” Louis muttered, and pulled the box out. It swung open, the hinges disintegrating at his touch.

Old, black and white photos scattered onto the floor, into Louis’ lap and over his knees and sliding over the splinters. A familiar face looked back at him, in curious old-fashioned clothes and stilted, old-fashioned poses. Harry Styles.

  


***

 

Louis sat in the kitchen and blew on a cup of tea. It was hot and perfect. The morning light was streaming through the windows, and it was beautiful. Not as beautiful as the face in the photos he had spread out on the wooden surface.

“Hey,” Louis said, “What’s a ghost’s favorite thing to eat for breakfast?”

He waited, but nothing responded. Louis stirred his tea, and tapped the spoon on the edge of the mug. It was important to pause, for the dramatic effect.

“You give up? _Boo-berries._ ”

Somewhere down the hall, a window slammed shut. Louis spread his arms out wide, giggling. A breeze lifted his hair away from his forehead. He didn’t know how any of this worked, but he had at least six months to figure it out.  


	2. Chapter 2

For the most part Louis had never been one of those kids who labored under the delusion that they were special. And he'd never worried about it.

He’d had too many siblings to feel unique. His mum had had to work too many hours, and he’d grown up too fast. Fast-moving, and fast-talking, and fast-thinking; nothing particularly special about that. Nothing more special than a thousand other oldest children who learnt babysitting with first-year Algebra, grocery budgets with geography.

He’d wanted something more special out of life, plenty. He'd felt impatient with all the people who’d liked him at parties but not the morning after, who’d wanted him to fit under their arm but not into the rest of their life. He'd felt bored of his decent job in the city. He’d been happy, but occasionally, he'd felt like something was missing. But everybody felt that way. It wasn't because he was _special._

Louis wished he could believe that he was special now.

Spring was creeping out of the grey winter around the big house, like water flowing under a frozen stream. Louis watched the trees with great attention, because every day there was something new and green taking the place of the scabbed bark. It felt exciting, and alive, and also apprehensive.

He wasn’t any closer to helping Harry. He wasn’t any closer to understanding any of it. He was just an ordinary boy who’d stumbled into this house and this mystery, and couldn't figure it out.

He felt, unaccountably, like there was a deadline. And if he missed it, he might lose the only truly special thing he'd ever had.

 

***

 

Louis set about the kitchen making morning tea. He filled the heavy kettle with more water than his one cup needed.

While it steeped, he filled three mugs with water and set them on the table.

“All right now,” Louis said, “Let’s try it again, eh?”

There was a doubt-filled creak from behind the stove. It was ancient by stove standards, although not by the standards of the house. Louis suspected that his great aunt had had it put in, judging by the mustard-yellow color. The kitchen still had an enormous fireplace, probably from the days that they had to stick entire deer in there. Liam would probably be up for figuring out how to roast a deer, someday.

Louis frowned meaningfully at the mugs. Steam rose off them in a neat line.

“Come on, won’t ever get stronger if we don’t do our workouts,” he said, which was hypocritical because one of Louis’ resolutions for these strange six months in this big country house was that he was going to get fit, run every morning, and he hadn’t gone for a run once. But Harry didn’t have to know that.

Louis took a long sip of his tea. Christine actually grew her own tea in an indoor tea garden. Louis had tried it politely and it was actually pretty ok, if mild. He still told her that the proper patriotic thing was to steal tea from other nations, and she sent him home with potholders and too many squash.

The kitchen was warm, clanking heat fighting off the chilly morning. Not as chilly these days, spring getting closer by the week.

“Don’t you dare make me cold,” Louis said, closing his eyes. “I'm a delicate flower and I can’t handle feeling poorly again.”

Louis had gotten sick just last week, and he’d been loud about blaming it on spectral disturbance. He’d turned around to find the tissues thrown all about the floor. But when Louis had fallen deep asleep on a downstairs couch and when he'd woken up, there had been a blanket thrown over him that had definitely been upstairs before.

There was a tapping that Louis’ brain couldn’t parse. Maybe it was...a shimmer, a burr, a percussion that wasn’t a percussion, somebody dropping something on sand. Harry had an easier time manifesting events when you pretended you were distracted, like how unfocusing your eyes sometimes let you read letters that had been too far away before.

Louis drank more tea and looked up.

Three mugs of ice on the table. A perfect spiral of frost carved around them in a figure eight.  

“Oh, shit,” Louis said, putting his mug down so quickly it splashed. Droplets hissed on the frosty surface, melting into the table grain. He put his face down to peer at the frost, tiny intricate crystals like a miniature castle. Like a fairy tale.

“Harry, you’re an artist. So glad you could come join the living this morning,” Louis said. There was a warm, fond brush of air on his ankles.

 

***

 

Louis had a piece of paper tacked up on his bedroom wall. It had been started after the very first dream, the night of the ouija board.

Ok, really Louis remembered it as the night he met the spectre who’d been trying to run him out of his own home and _kissed him,_ not that Louis was obsessing over that part. Much. Liam had always said that Louis’ main thing with boys was that he was most interested in the ones who were unattainable. Louis had never believed that before, but, Louis had never believed a lot of things before.

The paper read:

_-Harry Styles was a real person in this house, and now he is a ghost_

_-Harry’s dad was a dick, and he may or may not have murdered Harry_

_-Harry can make physical things happen in the world, more so when emotions were involved. Water, steam, temperature especially?_

_-Harry gets better at moving physical objects with practice. And when he's annoyed._

_-annoying Harry is not that hard_

_-Harry is tired after he moves things. Sometimes he disappears for days._

_-Harry really likes tv but never sports_

- _Ouija board better when drunk?!?!? (ask Zayn)_

_-_ _Harry needs help_

Louis had it memorized. Yet it helped to make something substantial when you were living with a roommate whose speciality was being incorporeal.

Despite several attempts, the ouija board had remained dead and plastic. Louis wondered if Harry needed more strength to move the planchette. Or whether he needed fresh candles.

“Ghosts”+”murder”+”vengeance” was an unhelpful search query. Louis learnt a lot of things about stupid ghost walk tours and people who thought that they could win the lottery if they held hands tight enough around a table, and nothing about what Harry needed. Or what Harry was.

 

***

 

After the night of the ouija board, Louis had gone into the village in search of clues to a long-cold murder.

The village only had a couple of options, as far as wisdom went. There was a library and there was a church.

He’d gone to the library. It was tiny, next to the post office/tea shop, and there was an ancient, tall, lean librarian with magnificent white sideburns reading at the desk.

“Hullo,” Louis said. He pulled out the photos of Harry Styles and slid them across the desk. “I have questions about the Styles family.”

The librarian jolted back with so much raw shock it was like Louis had dropped a carcass on his workstation. Then he recovered himself, eyes slipping away from the photos. Louis frowned at him. He had an old, brass-colored nametag without a name on it.

“This is a library,” the librarian said in a quavering voice, turning his face back to his reading. It was, to Louis’ surprise, a _Vogue_ magazine.

Louis cleared his throat.

“Shh,” the librarian said reprovingly, without looking up. Louis was the only other person _in_ the bloody library. He put his hand on one of the photos (Harry, younger than he’d looked in Louis’ dream, stiff and faded and the contours of his face blurred in the pale-cream sepia tint of the primitive camera, it made Louis’ heart jump a little to look at it) and slid it down the desk.

“I’m taking care of...I have the Styles house now,” Louis said, stuttering awkwardly, because _own_ felt wrong and _living in_ felt uncertain when he only had four old jumpers and three pairs of jeans in the bureau and a single pan. But he had the house for now, it had him; he had it like he had Harry's photos under the thin skin of his hands. Trying to keep contact with it all.

“I wondered if you knew anything about the family history.”

“The Styles family is no longer a part of this village, all died before your aunt even came here,” the librarian said. His voice rushed a little over the name. _Styles._

Louis was pretty sure he'd never mentioned his aunt, but everybody knew everything in tiny villages. At least they did in tv.

“Surely you have all kinds of archives for local history here,” Louis tried.

The librarian flipped a page to scrutinize summer bathing suits. He still didn't look at the pictures under Louis’ hand. His _not looking_ was so absolute that it didn't seem casual.

“Young lad like you, better off leaving the past buried,” he said. Louis felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. In the fairy tale, you were supposed to listen to these offhand warnings.

“Aren't you the librarian?” Louis asked. “Aren't you in the business of preserving knowledge?”

“Fine, back room, gold key on the chain,” the librarian snapped. “Put it back on the chain when you're done or I'll run a bobby to your great big house, don't think I won't.”

Louis grinned. “There's only one policeman in this place,” he said, scooping the photos carefully up and putting them back in their ziploc. He left the one of young Harry on top, in case he needed to look at it again, for reference.

“Only takes one,” the librarian said darkly.

Louis put aside suspiciously discouraging librarians and spent a dusty hour in the local history room. There were a lot of incredibly boring deeds about land, hand-drawn, or typed with what were either a lot of typewriter mistakes or language so old-timey it looked like mistakes. Louis thought he found something when he unearthed a police report, but it turned out to be concerned with repairing the plumbing of the school after some student vandalism. The biggest thing that ever happened in the village, clearly, was the occasional dispute about sheep grazing.

But there was also a local newspaper. Louis gently settled a massive stack of fragile papers down on the broad, flat scholars’ table in the middle of the archive room. He wound his way through reports of kids going away for school, agrarian speculation on rainfall, and patriotic picnics whenever the village remembered the Queen.

 _Styles._ Louis straightened up, interrupting himself mid-yawn.

_This year’s picnic was hosted on the grounds of Styles Manor House, vacant for these last years save for upkeep from our own Prescott Breslin, the appointed caretaker. It was a sparkling summer day, despite the naysayers! Some clamor had arisen at the choice of location given that the date of the picnic fell precisely on the anniversary of the unfortunate and mysterious disappearance of the remaining Styles family._

June 1. Harry’s last day alive. Or at least, last day _visible._ Louis breathed in old newspaper ink, he breathed in apple blossoms. He breathed in the scent of still-budding roses and the sizzle of lightning, the threat of a raised fist, the bright sun and the deep darkness of a hateful soul, a summer storm, washing over everything, washing everything away, _water and fire together_ \--

“We meet at last,” came a threatening voice from behind.

Louis came back to his body with a sickening jolt, heart thumping, stomach dropping. He whirled in the chair--

It was the village priest behind him, smiling. Something wrong with that smile.

“Oh,” Louis said, weakly. Louis supposed that the village priest wasn’t actually Henry Styles, come up behind him with a knife. Louis had seen the village priest about the streets, picking up bread at the supermarket and shaking hands with one of Agatha’s friends. He was short, rotund, mid-sixties and extremely ordinary. There was probably nothing at all wrong with his smile, just that Louis was jumpy.

The man was rubbing his hands together. It made a sound like dry paper. “I’ve been so hoping to find you alone,” he said.

“Uh,” Louis said helpfully.

“I’m Father Benedict,” he said. “And of course I know who you are, our newest parishioner, Louis. I wanted to be sure and invite you for tea. It is ever so rare to have a young soul like you come join us.”

So it was that Louis, who never went within ten yards of a church if he could help it, found himself in the disturbingly pale-pink sitting room of the local old clergy house. It was a tight, squat building made of fat tan stones with a distinctive pinkish cast. There were tight, squat pink roses hustled into tidy lines along the edge of the path leading up to the door, and a tight, squat tabby cat hissed at Louis on the way in. He hated it all. The bottom of his soggy vans made squelching noises on the carpet.

“Your aunt, of course, was never quite a member of our parish, now was she,” Father Benedict said, setting down tea. The tea set was fine china, so thin that Louis could see light through it, with a spray of pink roses on the translucent white. The tea was disgusting, half sugar and undissolved chunks of it at the bottom.

“Ah, would’ve thought not,” Louis said, managing not to smile. They hadn’t really known anything about his great aunt until she’d passed and left him the mysterious house, but he’d googled: she’d spent a youth fighting for women’s rights, become a lawyer, and traveled the world doing charity law work. Annie, named for an old family friend, bold as brass at every age and never home and then leaving _Louis_ , of all people, a house.

She wasn’t the same kind of mystery as Harry, but a mystery, nonetheless. Louis had no idea how or why she’d come into Styles manor, and decided to buy it.

Father Benedict was saying something that managed to be both mundane and threatening, about the importance of morality and the next generation. Louis tried to not come off as both tremendously gay and tremendously awkward. Unfortunately, those two things were his main essence.

“It’s been a real adventure with the big house,” Louis said, when there was a break in the polished religious spiel, more to interrupt him than anything. “I’ve actually been trying to learn more about the local history. Do you know anything of the story? The way that the Styles family disappeared?”

Father Benedict pursed his lips. There was a drop of tea trembling on his upper lip, caught on a spot where he’d missed with the razor. Louis tried not to look at it.

“Ah, always the famous _Styles_ family,” Father Benedict said, indulgently. Louis had no idea why everyone kept saying it like that.

“That’s the name,” Louis said cheerfully. “Henry, and the son Harry, that’s what I gathered. What did the police investigate? Was there ever a trial?”

“A trial, my dear boy,” Father Benedict said, even though Louis wasn’t his dear anything, “Why would there have been a trial?”

“Well because of the murder,” Louis said.

Father Benedict laughed, and it made Louis jump, clanking the thin teacup on its small plate, edged with its own rose gold border. Father Benedict was weirdly enthusiastic about this entire tea. Louis felt like a butterfly pinned to a chintz sitting room chair.

“Too many gothic novels,” Father Benedict said, wagging his finger, “Not enough bracing sermons! There was never any murder, of course. Harry Styles ran away, and the family was embarrassed, and the house fell into decay. That’s all there ever was to it, although it did become quite the myth of the village.”

“No,” Louis said, “Because Agatha--you know, Agatha?”

Father Benedict looked like he did. He looked like she wasn’t his favorite parishioner. Atta girl, Agatha.

“Agatha says that Henry and Harry both disappeared that night,” Louis said, “Never to be seen again. Both gone, you know? Maybe a murder-suicide?”

Father Benedict pursed his lips again.

“Welllll,” he said, drawing out the word, and leaning forward, like he was going to share a little secret. Louis couldn’t imagine a conspiracy fellow he’d trust less, but. He leaned in.

“Harry Styles ran away, of course. He must have! But the village had so many tales about the family. You have to understand, these great houses…families could trace their lineage back to the Roman age. Beyond! There were always rumors about that sort of family, and folks in the country back then were more likely to see the occult in normal, mundane tragedy,” Father Benedict said.

“In the old days, before the war of course--this village was rather wild. Now you must understand, there’s been a church here forever,” Father Benedict corrected himself primly, “But there were always--well. There have always been the old superstitions. They die so hard in these places. Stories of the fae, living in the hills. Ugly, pagan nonsense, the idea that the fair folk sometimes slipped into cradles at night, bestowing magic, or evil.”

Louis sipped the gross tea a little desperately, wondering what Zayn would’ve said.

“Uh, huh,” he said. Father Benedict didn’t need much encouragement.

“Now the village _rumor_ was that Harry Styles was a changeling. You know? Half boy, half forest. They thought he had magic. Too big of a smile, too bright in the eyes, and everyone loved him, charming.” Father Benedict was clearly trying to sound disapproving but even he sounded drawn in.

“And the fae…even if you only have a drop of their blood in you, from your mother, perhaps, then it's said that your vengeance is inevitable and your cruelty, unfathomable. Harry was rumored to be a strange boy.”

Louis could see it, smell it, practically taste it. Harry, a boy too lovely for this world. A boy who loved widely, and wildly, and wrongly, according to the people back then. Louis choked down more tea, choked down anger.

“But that's the nonsense,” Father Benedict said. “Harry Styles ran away, and his father died of a broken heart, and now everybody whispers about it, like there’s a curse on the house, like Harry whirled them both away with fairy magic. It simply doesn’t do to indulge in these rural superstitions, does it? It can be a dangerous thing.” The man of the Lord spoke with a ringing authority granted only to those who communed on high.

“Probably so,” Louis said.

 

***

 

Father Benedict sent Louis home with a cutting of roses, which he ditched into the first grove of trees he passed. He also gave Louis a small round metal insignia with a cross on it. He said it was a normal welcome gift from the church. He also said that it could be useful for the curse, with a coarse chuckle and no trace of scandalous superstition.

When Louis stepped over the threshold of the house, the insignia dropped out of his hand.

“What,” Louis started, turning, but the tiny light chain was caught in the wind. Or something.

“Fair enough,” Louis said watching it drag over the ridge of the open doorway. It was caught a bit on the wood. Louis leaned down to pluck it free, and then flung the piece of metal far out into the front lawn. It disappeared under the growing green grass.

“I didn’t care much for him, either,” Louis said. The wood made a creaking noise, somewhere deep in the house. Louis thought it sounded like Harry’s laugh.

Louis made a warm and prosaic pasta dinner and looked at the photos, cheeks chipmunk-stuffed with ravioli.

What did he really know about this person, anyway? This stranger from the past. He knew how to get a rise out of Harry and he knew that Harry liked some channels of tv and he knew that Harry was intrigued by him, by the details of Louis’ life. He had no idea who this boy was, though, other than the date that he disappeared and the fact that everyone seemed to have a different story about it.

Louis sighed, rubbed his face. He had to admit that he might well be cobbling his _own_ story together from bits of wind and falling objects and temperature changes. He had little but his own conviction that he was needed, and everybody in his life liked to warn Louis, more than he liked to listen, that he fell too hard into things that weren’t real.

He’d doggedly kept thinking of Harry like he thought of himself and Zayn and Liam and Niall but--but Harry was definitely not like them.

“You’d tell me if you were seeking vengeance,” Louis whispered into the pasta. “Wouldn’t you? You’d tell me. If you were something else.”

Harry, who couldn’t talk, didn’t say anything.

 

***

 

Louis went back to the library and asked for “gothic novels.” They looked excellent. They all seemed to feature at least two out of the three things most relevant to Louis’ life right now: creepy old houses, unruly ghosts, and murders.

Despite the eyes of the judgmental librarian, Louis got _Rebecca, The Castle of Otranto,_ and something called _Nine Coaches Waiting_ which was apparently a peppy re-do of Jane Eyre. Louis vaguely remembered not-reading Jane Eyre in school. Either way, there was a house on the front and black figures scampering away from a shadow. Promising.

 _Look,_ he texted Zayn on the way back, _i’m desperate, that’s the only reason for this question_

 _are u finally gonna take my haircut advice,_ Zayn wrote back immediately

_bc halleluja we will get you a bf at last_

_one that’s not a dickhead_

_Or dead_

 

 _Fuck u, don’t cheapen my quest to save the ghost,_ Louis wrote, and then followed it up with a smiley face, because that wasn’t really the best way to start asking a favor.

_don’t take this as meaning anything_

_but_

_I kind of want more candles_

_Can you send some?_

 

_haha funny thing i was literally thinking about that today_

_Gonna send you stuff, k_

_You hanging in there?_

 

Louis sighed. There was a light spring drizzle on the walk back to the house, plastering his long front hair to his forehead. Zayn was probably right about the haircut, wasn’t he.

_We can kind of talk but like not much_

_He can make thigns move, feels like talking_

_I can’t make anything work again not the ouija board not the dreams_

_I have to see him again_

 

Louis stopped, and thought about it, and started typing again.

 

_Stuff feels creepier. Not all just fun anymore._

_Feel confused. Like I don’t know the rules of this, you know?_

_Had a runin with the locals and there’s a story that Harry’s like, proper magic. Like a half fairy._

 

 _Wtffffffff,_ Zayn wrote back. Louis could just see the contempt on his face. For someone who was increasingly wrapped up in something that they were both resolutely NOT calling magic, Zayn had a lot of grief with the supernatural. 

There was a thinking-reminiscent pause in Zayn’s texts. Louis checked that the books were bundled safely under his jacket, protected from the rain. The house was rising above him, the long hill unwinding underneath it as he turned the curving road from the village.

 _Well aren't we all a bunch of fairies anyway,_ Zayn said at last. Louis cracked up. At least they were in this together, even if Louis was the one out here getting soaked in rain and judged by ministers.

 

_You need a different spell. I’ll send you smthng._

_We’ll figure out the rules._

_It’s my house,_ Louis wrote back, because even if he didn’t know whether it really was, he wanted it. He wanted…this place, Harry, it, he didn’t know.

 _I know,_ Zayn said.

_So we’ll make our own rules._

 

***

 

Louis went to bed every night hoping to dream about Harry and the summer lawn, but he kept missing the window. Once, he’d dreamed of the shape of the gazebo and tried, so hard, to step into it, but it hadn’t happened. Once, he’d woken up with his heart pounding and the taste of Harry’s kiss on his mouth, but he couldn’t figure out whether he’d been in a dream or just remembering, very hard. Just wanting, very hard.

Louis very much didn’t think about the fact that he was going crazy, wanting to have dreams about a boy who was dead, and the boy’s dream-mouth.

Once, Louis had fallen asleep and dreamed of darkness, of absence, the bottom of the floor falling out under his bed and leading to--he didn’t know where. He hadn’t felt Harry in that dream, but then again, what did Louis understand about any of it? He’d gone to bed with the lights on, after that dream, even though he’d told himself he was past being scared.

He was deep in the gothic novels. Louis had barely read in London but here it was cozy and settled to sit for hours in one of the many big country house nooks, watching crappy late-winter weather wash out, only getting up to pee or make a new mug of tea or bang around in the cupboards, wondering if Harry would be able to be around today.

“Fucking Rebecca,” Louis said, flapping the pages in the air at a particularly creepy bit. “You have a better personality, love. Fucking passive aggressive about serving tea and throwing parties, what sexist bullshit. Glad this place didn’t come with a housekeeper.”

Harry rustled the pages back onto Louis’ fingers. Louis grinned. It felt a little bit like somebody grabbing your hand, or maybe he was just insane.

“Does this all make me one of these heroines, then?” Louis mused. He raked fingers through his hair, which was beyond unruly and into unkempt, now. He threw his head back against the chair, arched up in an exaggerated stretch. Living alone was what made you insane, that’s all it was.

“Oh no,” Louis said, “Somebody save me, I am but a poor innocent beauty come from the city into this strange fortune. Why are there skeletons in the walls? I should get a white nightgown, shouldn’t I.”

His tumbler of water fell, somehow, right into his lap. Water up the stomach of his shirt, down into his pants.

“Ah, shit,” Louis said, “That’s how they destroy your innocence.”

He pulled the shirt off, threw it on the floor, and glared into the air. “You better get out of here,” Louis yelled, unbuttoning the top of his jeans, “I know you’re probably a prude, for all that you tried to haunt my freaking bathroom.”

A series of creaks, from the back of his chair and out the doorway. And then a final thump on the stairs, like Harry was emphatically saying _fine, I’m out, christ._

Louis smirked, grabbed his wet shirt and slouched up the stairs, putting a seductive sway in his step even if nobody living was there to see it. He was a heroine, wasn’t he?

 

***

 

Once, Louis fell asleep downstairs in the chair in front of the tv and it just happened. He was laying on his back on the grass and there was Harry, looking at him like it was the best thing Harry had seen in his long, strange, not-life.

“Thank god, Louis,” Harry said, and Louis loved the way that Harry said his name.

“I’ve been missing you,” Louis said, but his limbs felt heavy and strange and the grass was….was wet, maybe, under his back, like it was turning into a stream. It smelled like rainwater. He was losing feeling in his fingers and toes.

“Talk to me,” Louis said. “Why are you trapped? How do I free you?”

“Oh, please, please stay,” Harry said. The little crack in his low voice was painful.

“Harry,” Louis said, “Harry, who are you, what are you, I want to help,” but it was rushing over his open mouth and into it, drowning his tongue and making his teeth ache, water and ice, and the dream was gone.

 

***

 

Of course the village actually had three sources of wisdom: the library, the church, and bridge night.

“So tell me, what can I learn about folk remedies for sleeping problems? Like, what causes you to have crazy dreams?”

Louis had come ready to take mental notes so that he could do all of the things he could to talk to Harry again.

“Age,” Christine grunted. She was in a sour mood tonight. Louis blamed the biscuits, which were the crumbly kind, too frail for their tea. He was empathetic on that score.

“Oh, pish tosh,” Agatha said, “You slept terribly as a baby, and during the war, when you were young enough to swing a Lancaster rear gun one-handed, and after the war too.”

Martha laughed, which surprised everyone. It was a lovely sonorous laugh. Louis sometimes thought that Martha must have been very fetching when she was younger, and could see it when she smiled, for as rarely as he thought about the way that young women ever looked. He refilled Martha’s tea from a lavender-decorated teapot.

He'd met a few more people in the village, but none as entertaining as these three. Louis had become unreservedly attached to bridge night. He’d been given the standing role of managing the tea, and he was Agatha’s committed partner in their games despite the amount that they lost. This apparently spared Mr. Agatha from attending, so all were well served by the arrangement. Once a month there was a full dinner buffet, and all three times it had been a thick and juicy Shepherd’s pie.

“Did you really fly in Lancasters?” Louis asked.

Christine wrinkled her nose. “Of course not,” she said, “Women weren’t to be anywhere near the bombers. Or anything with artillery, though God knows they could and did shoot at us when we were manning the bases with all the boys in the air.”

“Bet you were a good shot, too,” Louis said. Christine nodded emphatically.

“I flew messages, and supplies, sometimes, and cleaned up other people’s engines, most often. But I could’ve, you know.”

“‘Course you could’ve,” Louis agreed. “You want to put a plane in the stables at the big house, you just let me know.”

Louis’ house (or, what was going to be Louis’ house, or, Louis and Harry’s house, as he’d started thinking of it, even though he wasn’t strictly convinced that was the healthiest ownership to imagine) had enormous stables to the back. Louis had spent about a week exploring them a month earlier. There were strange metal pens with big carved-stone troughs in front of them, for some esoteric farming purpose of which Louis knew not. There was a second floor that had half of a pipe organ covered in tarps. Louis had asked Harry whether he felt shafted by not having the pipe organ fully assembled so he could play melodramatically in the dead of night. Harry had dropped a curtain on Louis’ toes. Louis had pulled up organ music for two days on his phone and carried it about the house. Then he’d ordered a couple of speakers. Shipping took a while to get out as far as the village, though.   

“What kind of sleep issues?” Agatha asked, solicitously.

“Oh, dreams,” Louis said vaguely. “It gets extremely drafty in that big house. I keep...I keep getting some weird dreams, like, about the house. Where do wild dreams come from, anyway?”

He hoped he sounded innocent, not like someone doing a poor job talking around a ghost. Agatha looked thoughtful, but it could’ve just been the twists and turns of the game that Louis still wasn’t all that good at following. Martha looked like one of Napoleon’s generals on the battlefield, frowning over her cards.

“Well, then,” Agatha said, “Disturbed slumbers are a sign of trouble, aren’t they?”

Christine made a judgmental noise.

“We should send the boy home with a few more afghans,” she said, looking sideways at Louis’ shirt, which was one of the ones that hung loose on his collarbones and slipped down one shoulder, occasionally. “He’s clearly too cold.”

Louis handed Christine another biscuit, because maybe they could make up in quantity what they could not provide in quality.

“I’m fine up on blankets,” he said with the patience of someone who had already been sent home with new galoshes (courtesy of Agatha’s husband), a new coat (courtesy of Martha’s nephew who had outgrown it), and more scarves than Louis thought one person needed. Life in the country, he was assured, required a very different infrastructure than London life.

“Trouble isn’t always bad,” Martha said, old voice warbly and sing-song. “Life without trouble is very boring.” She lapsed back into strategy.

“That being true, do you want to stop the dreams, or have more of them?” Agatha asked.

“What if I wanted to have them?” Louis ventured, slowly. But the ladies only nodded, like this was reasonable.

“Gingko is something for dreams,” Agatha mused.

“Or bay leaves, you could _leaf_ one under your pillow,” Christine chortled.

“Terrible,” Louis said with total delight. He and Christine had a certain Bad Joke simpatico.

“No,” Martha said, her voice quiet but indisputable. “The root of a bracken. For riddles, and troubles, and answers when we have only questions.”

There was a beat of silence around the table. Save for the crunching of biscuits.

“Bracken, right,” Louis said.

The conversation moved on to more predictable topics, like how Martha’s family didn’t visit enough, and Agatha’s family visited entirely too much. Louis listened and laughed and put a note into his phone to look up whatever _bracken_ was, and lost at bridge, of course.

When he was on his way out, Agatha grasped him on the arm, her bent fingers crooked, urgent and strong.

“Louis,” she said. Louis stopped, something heavy in her tone. He wondered if she was going to say something pointed about the importance of blankets and hot water bottles.

“Dreams can be a lovely portal for the mind,” she said, “But portals go two ways. Be careful.”

“Right,” Louis said, shivering despite himself. But there was no, no way he wasn’t going to try. Hell itself could be waiting. And maybe it was.

 

***

 

Louis found bracken. Apparently bracken was just big fern, and there were rows and rows of them under the treeline that surrounded the lawn, spiraling little fronds forming a light green, miniature forest of their own. Louis walked far up the grounds to pick them, up the slope past the gazebo, ignoring the water that was leeching in at his toes and soaking up to his knees. The new growth had jutted inches in only the past few weeks. Even the damp in his clothes felt fresh, springlike and cheeky and alive. The air smelled of moss and mist. London spring grey had never come close to this.

“What a place,” Louis whispered to himself. He didn’t even know if Harry could hear him, out here, he never quite knew whether Harry was following along, but he hoped.

“I’ve never lived anywhere like here. It’s like a movie. I know you loved this place,” Louis said, “Maybe that’s why you recreated it to live in, for eternity.”

Louis wondered why you could be anywhere in a dream, but Harry was here, always waiting on these grounds, held under the beams of the sun. Maybe it had something to do with the magic that had saved his spirit on that awful night, tied to the earth.

Or maybe it was just that Harry had never been able to go anywhere else, so it was all he could imagine. Louis hadn’t really been many places, either. He’d been to France quite a few summers, Spain once, and a school field trip as far as Rome. If Harry had been alive, would they have met in this village? Maybe over a cup of tea, maybe at the library. Could they have spent Louis’ six months taking long walks in the fields, sharing secrets and wishes like spring growth, planning all the places they could travel together, endless summers into the future?  

Louis nudged the toe of his shoe into a clump of brush. There were tiny, star-like white flowers hiding underneath, pushing resolutely through the dirt, clumps of it still on their petals.

A cold shiver ran up his spine. Each day he got closer to something that didn’t want to be found, tripping invisible magic strings he couldn’t see. Everything was suspended, pulled out and hanging, a string between two points. Louis’ previously normal life, Harry flickering in and out of existence, these grounds caught between winter and spring, the way this house felt like it was taking root in the marrow of his bones and the way he also wanted to take Harry’s hand and pull him onto the first train, show him the entire world.

Harry didn’t even have a hand to take. The flowers looked like hope, and the shadows looked like madness, and Louis didn’t know which thing he was moving toward.

 

***

 

Louis absolutely blanketed the space between his pillows and the mattress with bracken. It would be just his luck to accidentally disrupt an excellent ghost-snog-session by rolling over in his sleep and falling off the bracken, and he wasn’t going to risk it. Louis fell asleep with earth-green-dirt smell up his nose.

He heard _Louis_ before the dream even resolved.

Harry looked more joyful than anyone Louis had ever seen.

“You came back,” he marveled. He was laughing with it, it broke up his words, or then again, maybe it had just been so long since Harry had gotten to use them.

“Of course, of course I came back, you’ve been such an annoying pain,” Louis said, throwing himself down on the warm grass. It was still vivid, a pillow on his back. Maybe he was feeling the mattress. No matter.

“I tried to drive you away, when you first came,” Harry said, “Not now. Not now. I have waited for you every single night.”

“I know,” Louis said, softer. “I tried. I had to find a way back.”

Harry nodded.

“I get...drained,” Harry said, looking apologetic. “No one has ever seen me as you have. The first night, you did something to help.”

“A spell, I think, but it doesn’t work anymore?”

“It helped,” Harry repeated, “Made me…safer.”

Was Harry the one who needed to be safe, or was Louis? Harry looked like a human boy, if unusually gorgeous, warm skin and broad shoulders. Louis felt so, so drawn to him, like he just wanted to grab on and never let go. _This isn’t your body,_ he reminded himself, just in case.

“I’ve been trying to pull you back ever since,” Harry said.

“Oh,” Louis said, flattered. “Playing hard to get, I suppose.”

Harry was smiling at him. It was open and delightful and he had such cute dimples, mischief in his eyes.

“I know so much more about you, now,” Harry said, and if ghosts could be smug that's what he was.

“Look, you can’t judge me, I didn’t expect to have a roommate who might be anywhere at any time,” Louis said, grinning back. Harry was sitting cross-legged and Louis was on his back, up on his elbows. Harry scooted around to face him. He put a hand on Louis’ face.

“Is it all right,” Harry said, a little breathless. God, it was all right. Louis wanted to pull him down, closer.

“You’re already in my mind,” Louis said, “I’m not playing _that_ hard to get.”

Harry had an expression that Louis couldn’t read, even though Louis found that he actually felt like he knew Harry quite well now, in a body or not.

“I know I am terribly forward,” Harry said, and now he was down on his side in the grass, their faces inches apart. His hands were around Louis’ face, cupping it like something precious. Harry felt real enough, weight pushing him into the grass. Oh, god, he was beautiful.

“I can only feel my own body, with you, and I cannot tell you how much I miss that,” Harry whispered. Louis could tell that he was being careful all the way down through the weight of his slim legs, bracing over Louis, but desperate to be close. Louis felt his own pulse, wanted to catch his fingers into all the curves of Harry’s body. _Not a body,_ he reminded himself.  

“I also know you are a tease,” Harry said.

“Uh,” Louis said, and then, “uh,” again, like a moron.

“I like it very much,” Harry said.

“Oh….” Louis gulped, and trailed off. It just wasn’t fair, this sort of situation. It wasn’t fair that he was in a gothic romance with an unattainable spectre who looked like all of Louis’ high school fantasies come real, and who tolerated his jokes.

Louis let himself wrap his arms around Harry, cuddled him close. Harry made a heartbreaking noise, surprise and familiarity mixed together, long-lost coming back to something. Louis guided Harry’s head down onto his chest and then he was staring at the bright dream-sky, the spice-smooth smell of Harry mixed with fern, gorgeous boy in his arms.

“You have to tell me how to help you,” Louis said.

“I do not know,” Harry said, frustrated and longing, more intense than anything before. He said it into Louis’ chest, breathing deep. Louis had never felt this way about anyone—well, anyone alive—like Harry was suddenly oxygen, like he needed to pull Harry into himself forever. His back was cold, suddenly, like the ground was sucking the warmth from him, but Harry’s body was warm, too warm, burning. Louis shivered.

“You have to come back. Please, don’t leave me alone,” Harry said.  

Louis opened his mouth, and then woke up before he could promise away his life to something he didn’t even understand. And fuck, he would’ve done it.

“Fuck,” he said, out loud in the quiet dark. He flipped on the lamp, sat up, put a hand to his chest. He still felt Harry’s phantom weight, if his racing heart was anything to judge by.

Louis felt something slippery, slimy and terrible under his other hand. He squealed embarrassingly high and tried to flounder out of the bed. For a heart-stopping second the sheets were high around his throat, around his limbs, it was horribly like being pinned down by invisible hands—he was choking, gagging in the night air.

And then Louis rolled out, kicked them off, and fell to the floor in a thump.

“See, a nightgown would’ve killed me, that’s why that shit’s impractical,” Louis told the ceiling. He got up.

It was the bracken. All the ferns, which had been fresh and fragrant when he’d fallen asleep, were now a twisted pool of melted plants. It was brown sludge and dry stems, like something had sucked every bit of life out of the plants.

Louis had been trying _extremely hard_ to not get scared. But some things made the staunchest gothic heroine beat a temporary retreat.

He spent the rest of the night downstairs with the tv on, tuned loudly to a sports channel, and all the lights on.

 

***

 

Louis’ resolve lasted three nights, before he tried again.

He took his pens out to the front porch and drew plants, and candles, and then a pair of hands that turned out to look like Harry’s, so he threw that one out. He didn’t talk out loud to any of the noises in the house, and otherwise tried to act like a normal human. And then on the fourth day he came out of the shower to find that Harry had drawn a _flower_ on the mirror in the condensation, five petals coming out of a circle like kids draw. Louis melted.

“You’re a bloody idiot,” he sang to himself, picking up just a handful of bracken this time, and putting them on a trash bag spread out beneath his pillows.

Zayn had sent new candles. They were different, scents like _Ocean Drift_ and _Peony Sparkle_ and, weirdly, what looked like a handmade candle that Zayn had gotten some local shop to make (you could get anything in London—Louis spared a second to remember the city and miss it, curry and friends in bars and a thousand nationalities crammed together, had Harry ever been to London?)—labeled _Places We Haven’t Been Yet_ in Zayn’s cramped, aggressive script. It smelled like apples.

Louis left all the candles burning in a sweet-smelling fire hazard and closed his eyes with the rustle of trash bags under his head. He’d left off his shirt and was only under the blanket, sheets kicked off to the floor.

He took a deep breath, listened to the non-noise of the bedroom, twitched his feet under the blankets, and there was Harry.

Harry threw his arms around Louis and pulled him into his lap. Louis blinked in the sudden sunlight, the hazy summer heat.

“Louis, Louis,” Harry murmured against Louis’ ear. It was terribly flattering.

“Hi,” Louis breathed. Harry was breathing like somebody running a race. Louis squeezed him tight. “I’m here, I got you,” he said.

“Why didn’t you come back?” Harry said.

Louis did not say, _because you’re a little scary._ He couldn’t actually remember that feeling. Harry was holding him in his lap, a little desperately, Louis’ legs wrapped around Harry’s waist and Harry’s arms wrapped around his shoulders.

It was a great snogging position. _Not a body,_ he thought, a little desperately. _His_ body was having a difficult time with that concept.

“I thought maybe you were going back to the city, back to the boy,” Harry said, “You didn’t set up any exercises, you didn’t talk to me. I’m going to run out of time, Louis.”

Harry sounded scared, and he sounded…sounded fierce, fierce hands holding Louis in, fierce breath against Louis’ neck. Louis patted his hair, quick strokes with both hands.

“Oh,” Louis said, “No, Harry, no, I’d never leave you alone here.”

Promises, like it was nothing, slipping out of him already.

“Wait,” Louis said, “What boy?”

“The boy,” Harry said. He set Louis back down in the grass, scooted away with a look of apology, like he’d been overcome and now he was recovering his gentle old-time manners.

It was unsatisfactory. The ravishing was like, the best part of the gothic heroine thing.  

Harry rolled back into the dream-warm grass. He was looking up at the branches of the blooming apple tree that swayed over them. Always with the apple trees.

“What, what boy?” Louis said, crawling forward on his elbows to nudge Harry with his chin. The grass was so believable under his stomach where his shirt rolled up. It itched, even. Every time he was here it got harder to remember that he actually wasn't. He had no idea where the shirt came from. Actually, now that he was thinking about it, the details sprang into place and he was wearing strange old-fashioned clothes.

“Holy shit, did you put me in your weird clothes? What even is this, does this have ruffles? My god. Did the runway shows we watched mean nothing to you?” Louis asked, distracted.

“The boy from the small television,” Harry said patiently, still looking at the apple blossoms like he was trying to find something in them. This seemed important to him.

Louis frowned in confusion and then smashed his face into Harry’s chest, fake-biting at his old-fashioned shirt. Harry was wildly ticklish, Louis learned.

“What, _no, stop,”_ Harry wailed, pushing with light hands at Louis’ head, too gentle to even push him off effectively. Or maybe too ghostly, Louis didn’t really know. Harry seemed strong (strong enough for ravishing, maybe). If he’d had a real body. Louis pushed the thought away, because it made him feel twisty and wrong.

“Harry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Louis said, getting up on his knees, throwing a knee over Harry, close and bright-eyed and daring. They felt so comfortable together in this place that he didn't even think before he moved.

Harry grabbed both of his hands in pre-emptive defense against tickling, and Louis stuck out his tongue. Harry was such a fast learner.

“The boy...who said cruel things to you...in your small television...the night that I first talked to you,” Harry said.

“Ooooh,” Louis said, “My _phone,_ hah! Small television! Harry. You grandpa!”

Harry gave him an enormous frown, lips bunching under his nose. Louis watched it, terribly endeared, before he realized that the important part of what Harry was saying wasn’t actually about the technology he didn’t understand.

“Oh,” Louis said again, less delighted, “Stupid Paul, that’s who you’re talking about. No, no, Harry, he’s not my boy. He’s not my anything.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. He was still holding Louis’ wrists, fingers easily overlapping. Louis wondered whether these were really what Harry's hands had felt like, or whether he was just making up the details. You couldn't tell from pictures.

There was the low hum of bees in the meadowgrass, the smell of the blossoms on the air. Louis couldn’t imagine anything further from the cigarette-smoke, neon-lit London clubs he thought of when he thought of Paul.

“We used to be together, not for very long,” Louis said, “It ended. It’s not anything important. He's not important.”

“Stupid Paul,” Harry repeated quietly, with flattering weight on the first word.

Louis had thought, with a shy undercurrent, that Harry might be pleased to know Louis was single. Fuck, Louis had given up trying to be reasonable in his own head about the way he was clearly feeling about Harry. He wasn’t prepared to think past trying to solve the mystery of how to help Harry. He couldn’t think through what it meant, all this dreamspace experience that might not, in the end of it, be anything more than his own brain fantasizing.

But Harry actually looked sad.

“Was he not brave, like you?” Harry asked.

Louis sat back, tired of being on his knees. It put his bum squarely on Harry’s thighs. He felt Harry still, careful not to move in the grass. Louis smiled at him.

“I dunno about that, I wasn’t terribly brave either. We just weren’t right for each other, you know? He didn’t want to be with me.”

“Perhaps he was scared,” Harry said. He still had one of Louis’ wrists and he moved a finger against the thin skin. “I know...how much it hurts, our kind of love, to always have to be a secret. When I was young--” _when he was alive,_ Louis thought, because Harry had never gotten the chance to be anything other than young-- “I was so angry. Now, I have more forgiveness.”

“Oh,” Louis said, realization dawning, “Oh, oh god, Harry, _our kind of love._ It’s not like that anymore. If you’re--” what language had they even used back then?-- “If you fall in love with a boy, you know, it’s the same? You can fall in love and get married and everyone can know. Harry, it doesn’t have to be a secret for people like us, anymore.”

Harry just looked at him, big eyes, so much behind them. Louis wished, rather desperately, that he wasn’t a total idiot who hadn’t thought critically enough about the world that Harry had grown up in. About what the conflict with his father must have really been _like._

“The world has changed,” Louis said. He got up, but slowly and with a reassuring squeeze of Harry’s hand, and settled into the grass. “It’s not perfect, but people like us fought for our rights, and there are--there are a lot of us, Harry. A whole lot. We're not alone. We're not a secret. We're like family, you know?”

“Tell me about it,” Harry breathed. Dream-tears shone behind his dream-eyes. Louis felt his heart ache. And that was real, dream or no dream.

 

***

 

Louis woke up in a cold sweat. It was early spring, not summer. The wind was bitter and accusatory, not light and playful. The shutters on the downstairs windows were flapping, a long, hollow clang that rang out in the night.

And Harry was dead again. Harry had always been dead.

Louis pulled on the thick wool coat that Agatha had made him buy, in all her wisdom. He stuck his cold feet into the vans he’d thrown by the door, and went out into the night.

When he reached the gazebo and sat on the bench, he burst into tears.

Eventually, he facetimed Zayn. He answered immediately from his bedroom, lit only by the phone like he’d answered it before even turning on the light.

“Are you safe? What's happening? I didn’t feel anything,” Zayn said.

“Yeah,” Louis sniffed, “Fuck, Zayn. We’re lucky to be alive now.”

“Hey, hey,” Zayn said soothingly. The video shook as he untangled himself from bedsheets and flipped on his bedside lamp, got settled with a pillow to his back.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I dunno, I’m sorry, I’m being an ass and it’s four in the morning,” Louis hiccuped. Zayn just looked at him. Louis sighed.

“Feel a little overwhelmed,” he said. “I dreamed about Harry again tonight. We talked all night. We talked...we talked about stuff like, how it is to be gay now. He didn’t have any idea, Zayn, you know? He just lived his whole life in this fucking house in the middle of nowhere and he never got to just love somebody, and there was just this one guy that he was going to run away with, and then his fucking dad was going to kill him and now he’s a ghost, Zayn, it’s not fair.”

Louis was crying again, tears down his cheeks. The wind was whipping, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t Harry, who usually seemed to have a hard time getting this far out of the house, and was pretty quiet after Louis had a dream, like it had exhausted his limited amount of ghost energy to manifest in the dream in the first place. Louis felt awfully alone.

“No, it’s bloody not fair,” Zayn said. “I know, babe. The world is harsh. But it’s not real anymore, yeah? We’re lucky to be alive now.”

“We’re lucky to be alive,” Louis emphasized. “Zayn, Harry deserves a...a do over. That must be… It must be why I'm here. I have to help him. I have to. He's the sweetest person I've ever known. I just, I just want him to get to live and make jokes and not be fucking _scared_.”

Louis wasn't sure when it had all flipped in his head, that Harry was the one who was scared despite being, for all intents and purposes, an unholy abomination sent to scare the living.

Zayn sighed.

“Harry isn't alive, anymore,” he said. “He's not hurting. He can't be hurt.”

“I know he's fucking dead,” Louis wailed, “But he also asked me about my ex tonight! Because he thought maybe society broke us up! He's dead and he _cares,_ Zayn, I'm supposed to help him. I know I am.”

He could feel it, like he could feel the planks of the gazebo around him, like he could feel the house, beyond that. He wasn’t special but he was supposed to be here, supposed to be doing something. This house and its history and the mystery of Harry Styles had built themselves into his flesh and bones. He was as trapped in it as any ghost.  

“Breathe, babe,” Zayn said. “We're gonna help him.”

Louis breathed. The wind caused static on the Facetime, and Zayn just sat there, peaceful and comforting. His perfect hair was still perfect in the middle of the night. Louis’ hair was something of a birds’ nest. He hiccuped.

“This is insane,” Louis said. Maybe the first time he'd admitted it out loud.

“Yep,” Zayn said, “Hey, you know what you should do? Play Harry some pride parades.”

“Hah, that’s a great idea,” Louis said, voice steadier and the frog in his throat starting to clear. “Harry would adore those. He’s well into fashion. He’s gonna flip out.”

“Remember last year, when you ended up joining a Wizard of Oz party?” Zayn said. Louis wiped the lingering wet off his cheeks, and smiled at the memory.

“Oh my god, yeah,” he said, “I was head-to-toe in silver paint so they thought I was the tin man. Always looking for a heart, that's me.”

“If I recall the moral of that movie, which you made me watch twice the next day since I'd never seen it,” Zayn said, teasing, “The point was that they all already had what they were looking for.”

“Yeah, all right,” Louis said, letting Zayn’s love bolster him. It was the point of friends. “Got silver paint in the backseat of your car that year. Harry’s probably never seen Judy Garland, Zayn!”

“Oh, this could be exciting, a chance to introduce a baby ghost gay to the classics,” Zayn smiled through the Facetime. Louis really loved him. “I mean he hasn’t heard David Bowie? Prince? Lady Gaga? Freddy Mercury? Pull them all up on youtube.”

“First thing tomorrow,” Louis resolved.

“I’m coming tomorrow, too,” Zayn said, scratching his ear. “Or today, guess it’s morning.”

“You don’t,” Louis started, and Zayn put the phone close-up to _his_ face this time, which was usually Louis’ insistent move.

“You’ve been alone in that house with Harry, who may or may not be some kind of magic vengeance spirit trapped in your house, who’s going through a crisis about his murderous bigoted dad, and you’ve obviously got a crush on him, too, because _that_ makes sense,” Zayn said.  

“You need company. Besides, I’ve been having this like....sense about it, for a while. I already put in at work. I was just doing it before I even thought.”

“It's not just that there's a ghost. It’s you, too,” Louis said, because it was time for them to get real about all of it.

“You’ve got some kinda...you’ve got some kinda magic, Zayn. You know you do. It’s time for us to get real about this stuff. That spell you sent, the candles, and the way you can read tarot, your, like, hunches--”

“Yeah,” Zayn sighed. Louis was surprised that he was agreeing, he’d expected this to be a weeks-long argument, and even then, that Zayn would deny it.

“Yeah, it’s true, I’m a goddamn warlock,” Zayn said. He looked cranky.

“I’m not sure what it’s about but I just, I know. The other day I was making a perfectly normal cup of tea and then I knocked all the leaves down on the floor accidentally, and I looked at them and I was like, _oh, I’m going to go stay with Louis._ I just saw it in the shapes. Also something about a new friend, an old one, thought that might be Harry, I dunno.”

Louis nodded and they stared at each other, a little helplessly. Two normal lads who liked to sit around in pubs avoiding doing their laundry and checking out cute boys and talking shit. And apparently now they were also part of something bigger and more supernatural than either of them could fathom.

“Don't get a big head about it,” Louis said. “I'll only be impressed when you can actually fly. On a broom.”

Zayn laughed, and the spell was broken (a delicate phrase, Louis realized, he was going to have to watch the metaphors around Zayn now).

“So you think it’ll be ok with Harry?” Louis said. He could ask, but Harry wouldn’t tell him no. But he felt wildly protective of their quiet, contained space together in the house. It was their house. He couldn't stand the thought of losing contact with Harry, who seemed to trust Louis now.

“Have you been burning the candles I've sent?” Zayn asked.

“Yes,” Louis admitted. Zayn was going to hold this over him forever. He'd get dumb bath and body works baskets for every Christmas from now on.

“And have they stayed lit?” Zayn asked.

Louis squinted at him through the phone. “If you're asking whether I've accidentally forgotten to blow them out and nearly burnt myself to a crisp, the answer is not _not_ yes.”

“Good,” Zayn said, “So I'm welcome. I'll see you Friday, bringing a shit-ton of new candles. You’ll smell nice, for once.” And he hung up.


	3. Chapter 3

Louis slept in later than normal and woke up with a mild headache in the back of his skull, but no more dreams. He moped around the house for a little bit, and felt no trace of Harry. That wasn’t a surprise. It usually took Harry a couple of days to regain communication abilities after a long dream.

Louis still felt a little pissed about it all. Emotions were crap, that was the thing. He wanted to take a nap and for Harry to cuddle him and….he wanted stupid, impossible things.

He headed down to the village, to find Agatha at the post office-cafe. He threw himself down in the white wire chair across the table from her.

“I need tea,” he said.

“You certainly do,” she said.

Louis got a big mug and a cookie from Christine’s niece, who winked at him. At some point Louis had gone from feeling like a stranger to knowing the names of at least ninety percent of the tiny village and he hadn’t even noticed.

“What do you do when the world is crap?” Louis asked. Agatha considered, tapping her silver spoon on the side of her stalwart mug of tea. She had her hair up in a fetching braided bun today, pure white and wispy. Louis liked knowing old people, for the first time in his life. It had seemed like nobody was old at all in London.

“The world is often terrible,” Agatha said at last. “You don’t add to it, that’s all I know.”

“Is this you telling me not to give up?” Louis asked.

“I would never tell you what to do, my dear,” Agatha said. Louis stuffed the rest of the cookie in his mouth and downed the tea, humming skeptically. But he felt his spirits renewed.

“And there’s always bridge night,” Agatha pointed out. “It’ll be the good biscuits again next time.”

“You’re right, I gotta keep my focus on the important things,” Louis said.

“Bring your handsome stoic friend with the black hair,” Agatha said.

Louis imagined Zayn at the mercy of bridge night, and grinned large. “I sure will,” he said.

It wasn't until Louis was halfway up the big hill that ran between his and Harry's house and the village main that he realized he'd never actually told Agatha that he had a friend coming.

 

***

 

Louis welcomed Zayn to the house with a rousing soundtrack of Queen, playing out of the speakers he’d stacked lopsidedly on the heavy, carved wood mantel.

“Turn it down,” Zayn said in his ear as he pulled Louis in for a crushing hug. Zayn had brought about five suitcases, somehow, and Louis was afraid that one was entirely filled with Zayn’s sort-of-magical-crap, or at least whatever Zayn was going to claim was necessary and magical now, like candles and new curtains and the fancy conditioner he’d been trying to force on Louis for the entirety of their friendship.

“Watch when I do, though,” Louis said, clicking the music off on his phone. The house was silent, but only for a second. An ominous thumping started in the ceiling, right over their heads. Suspiciously like somebody stomping.

“Wow, Harry?” Zayn asked, “Nice to meet you! Throwing a tantrum, are we?”

Louis grinned up at the ceiling. There were tiny dust flakes shimmering down on them, and the beams were shaking.

“He loves music a lot,” Louis said, turning it back on. “He also likes Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac.”

“Already having a Joni phase,” Zayn said, “These country boys.”

 

***

 

“I think I figured out the ouija,” Zayn said with his mouth full, over dinner. Louis had experimented with a squash-bake recipe, and he thought it had turned out nicely. They needed warm sustenance before magic, Zayn had said.

“Oh yeah?”

Zayn turned over squash pieces with his fork, inspecting them.

“Ok, so I talked to my stupid fucking ex,”

“Asshole,” Louis said, as was his duty, and Zayn nodded.

“And I still don’t think he’s a witch and he’s an idiot, but he’s proper into ouija so he told me they’re kind of like, conduits for unconscious energy. And I thought, that seems wrong now because you dream Harry up, and Louis, I think _you’re_ the channel, now. Once Harry got in your head it was too much for the board. Ouija boards are for like, people without magic in them, I think.”

“I don't have magic in,” Louis protested. “I'm just….me. There's nothing different about me.”

Zayn shrugged, salting his salad. Agatha would've scolded him.

“I don't know what you are, babe, but your aura’s gone wonky. Saw it as soon as I saw you. It’s changed. You’ve changed. You’re the color of the house.”

Zayn looked...worried. Louis shrugged, and tried not to look worried in return.

“I’m not magic,” he said, quietly.

“Yeah, all right, don’t look so disappointed, being magic is really freaking me out. But you’re connected to him,” Zayn said, “You didn’t….Lou, you didn’t give anything away, in the dreams, did you? Promise him anything?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Louis said, instead of answering. The thought was cold in the pit of his stomach. He thought about the dead bracken, life force drained out of it, the numbness in his fingers and toes in Harry’s summer limbo despite all the dream-sun.

“I don’t know,” Zayn repeated. “But I think we need to figure this out for you, as much as for Harry. I think we need to try a new spell.”

 

***

 

Zayn’s spell, apparently, involved Zayn wandering around the house and putting little sachets of potpourri around. It involved opening all the windows, Zayn running his fingers through the air, and then closing them again. It involved Zayn dictating a top 40s bop playlist to Louis while he did it all. Louis had his doubts about the last bit being magical at all but he was too occupied with the whole _you’re connected_ thing.

“You know it smells like my grandmother in here, now, like it smells like a bouquet of flowers or something,” Louis said. “Can’t you do manly magic? Smell like sawdust or something?”

“I don’t believe in sort-of-magical-half-fairy-people, to be quite clear. It’s fucked up enough that I’m being asked to believe in ghosts at all,” Zayn said, staring into the darkness. “But also, I invoke the power of the half-spring moon to protect us. And these are spring herbs, and stuff, should be good. For earth magic. Not that that’s a thing, I don’t know.”

“Cool,” Louis said. “We’re not gonna hurt him, yeah?” Harry had been eerily quiet this whole time.

Zayn wandered back from the window and grabbed Louis’ hand. Demi Lovato wailing _Confident_ through the speakers. It was good, because Louis wanted confidence.

“Not gonna hurt him,” Zayn said, “Or you. We’re gonna try and get him out of the spirit realm, you know? And into our realm. I think he’s trapped in that summer place you keep dreaming about, and he needs to be let out of it. Bring him back to the real world, might undo whatever created that summer place. It’s an embodiment spell, to open a bigger portal, strengthen whatever’s happening in your dreams.”

 _And then he’ll be able to move on,_ Zayn didn’t say, but Louis had a lot of practice hearing meaning without words these days. Louis took a breath that felt a little shuddery. But Harry needed help, deserved help.

“Are you ready?” Zayn asked.

Louis wasn’t ready. But he stepped forward into Zayn’s weird potpourri circle with Demi-level confidence, as he was wont.

“All right, Harry,” he said, “You ready to get spelled into corporeality?”

“You’re not supposed to warn the bloody ghost,” Zayn said. “Supposed to take ‘em by surprise. Like curing the hiccups.”

Louis shot him a poisonous look. “You don’t understand him,” he said.

“I understand that he watches everything you do whether you yell at him or not,” Zayn said, and Louis thought his tone was unfairly cold. Or maybe it was the strain of the magic, or some other pathetic excuse that Zayn was going to use to make Louis buy their beers later.

“It’s creepy,” Zayn sniffed, and a candle fell on his head from the mantel.

“Be nice,” Louis said to both of them.

Zayn rubbed his head and glared. His face took on a longer, sharper quality. The sun had already gone down, another short and cold day, and the house was aglow with candlelight.

Zayn had a notebook with something written in Latin, and he started reading it, the words slurring and smooth.

Louis didn’t know what to do. He was supposed to be the focus, Zayn had said, to bring Harry along the channel of their connection. He just wished, very hard, with an ache in his chest.

Zayn held out a hand. Louis had seen that hand so many familiar times, with a beer, with a video game controller, with a takeout menu, and now--with fingertips that looked nearly iridescent in the candlelight. He finished.

They looked at each other. Silence, and a cold draft, that might have been anything. 

“Did you see anything?” Louis asked. Zayn shook his head.

“Did you feel anything?” Zayn asked in return. Louis sighed. It was just his own normal, boring self.

“I guess it didn't work,” Louis said. His mouth tasted like bitter disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” Zayn said, “It’s all new and I’m like, flying blind, I don’t--”

“Yeah,” Louis said, interrupting him, because he didn’t need the end of that sentence. They didn’t _know._

 

***

 

They went to bed in foul moods. Louis’ mind was still turning with irritation. He hoped he'd see Harry tonight at least. He wanted, with a too-intense pain, to get Harry to put his arms around him, to lay back in the grass with his head in Harry's lap.

Louis fell into the dream, but everything was wrong.

It was winter, where it had always been summer before. The air didn't smell of apples, it smelled wet and sharp. Like lightning, Louis thought.

“Harry?” Louis asked. No arms around him, and no sun. The air was grey, the earth was ominous under his footsteps. Louis breathed in and it was like prickles of ice, a sense of being watched.

“Are you here, because this is not cool,” Louis snapped, “You can’t just brood, you know, throw a fit. Because we’re _trying_ to help you. Can’t just scare me whenever you’re in a bad mood.”

He walked, he didn’t know where. Through darkness.  

“Not a healthy way to show emotion,” Louis grumbled.

 _You,_ someone thought in the dream. Louis opened his mouth to yell _who the fuck else would it be_ and the words were--thrown back into his throat, were a garble, he was choking on his own tongue.

There was a black figure, a hole in reality instead of the shape of something. Louis felt drawn toward it and repulsed by it at the same time. He felt its power, noticing him. Focusing on him. There was grass and brush under his feet and it was withering, like a fast-forward time lapse into winter.

 _You are a fool, to come to my house._ Louis didn’t know if it was his mind, or someone else’s mind, something he didn’t understand, the wild vein of magic running underneath this land. Harry wasn’t here, he couldn’t see him, or maybe Harry just wasn’t here wearing the body that he’d been tricking Louis with. Malice rose in the air around him, and Louis fell to his knees. He was properly choking now, he could feel the blood pulsing hot under his face, his skin tightening, the fire in his lungs. Fire and ice.

 _I don’t want to die,_ Louis thought.

“Wake up!” Someone screamed.

Louis opened his eyes to find Zayn crouching over him on the bed, muttering rapidly and reading from a sheet of paper. His hair was floating over his head and tinged with gold, like fire. There was crackling static around them.

“Fuuuuuuuck,” Zayn said. And then, “Aw, bollocks, that's not the end of that spell.”

Louis laughed, relieved and hysterical.

“You always gotta put your own flavor on it, huh,” he said. His throat hurt, maybe from screaming in his sleep. Or not sleep, but whatever it was.

“Yeah,” Zayn agreed, with an incoherent laugh of his own. He was in pajamas and glasses and he flopped down into Louis’ bed, drained from whatever the spell had taken. They curled into each other, limp with relief.

Zayn ran a hand through his hair. It came away dripping gold, and he didn't seem to notice. As Louis watched, the color faded away. It was just them in the room, ordinary again.

Them, and Harry. The stairs were cracking like somebody running up and down them. Louis felt a rustling wind on his face, so urgent it was unpleasant.

“I'm ok, I'm ok,” he said. Harry's presence did not feel convinced. He felt worried, frustrated, no tools to talk except the wind in his face. Louis stuck out his tongue in the dark room, because communication was hard even when you _had_ a tongue.

It hadn't been Harry in the dream. He wouldn’t believe it, that force dragging him to hell. It _couldn’t_ have been.

“You were gone,” Zayn said from where his face was smashed into the sheets. He patted an exhausted hand on Louis’ stomach.

“You were...locked in somewhere. God, Lou, it felt like I knew you were underwater, and I couldn't pull you up.”

“You did though,” Louis said, sitting up and fingering Zayn's hair reassuringly. It did not, sadly, give him any magic gold residue. Zayn made a rude, relieved noise.

 

***

 

 _Stop,_ was written on the bathroom mirror when he came out from a prolonged hot shower. Louis had let it warm him thoroughly for a good forty minutes, skin going bright red and a little painful, but feeling good, feeling alive.

Harry was well and truly upset, because all of their clothes were on the ground outside, flung from the bedroom window. Zayn had brought two suitcases worth of black clothes, now brown in the mud.

“I'm not going to stop, Harry,” Louis said indignantly. A pipe groaned loudly. It sounded like frustration. Louis stomped through the hallway, and any water they tried to use stayed freezing cold the whole rest of the day.

Zayn insisted that they take at least a few days to recover. Louis took him on some long walks around the grounds, and Zayn didn’t say much, but he also didn’t complain about the damp. They made heavily-spiked cider and watched _Practical Magic_ on Zayn’s laptop and argued about which sister was which one of them. Louis felt the light warm gust that meant Harry was watching over his shoulder. Louis tried to pretend he didn’t still feel a ring of cold ice around his neck, bruises lining the soft channel of his throat, like he’d been choked from the _inside._  

 

***

 

Louis had previously been able to rattle Harry out of whatever bad mood he ended up in, given enough bad ghost-puns and singing, but Harry seemed fixated on communicating the seriousness of his upset this time. There were no dreams at all.

“He's keeping me out,” Louis mumbled over breakfast cereal. His head felt heavy despite a long, dreamless sleep. Louis missed him. Missed getting to see Harry. Missed his dream-touch. He didn't say that to Zayn.

Zayn was perched on a stool and wearing Louis’ stolen flannel pajamas, ankles sticking out. He looked up from the book he'd been reading, while sucking absently on a spoon. _Witches of East End,_ which Louis did not think counted as acceptable research.

“Are you sure about that?” Zayn asked.

“He's being _a brat,”_ Louis said loudly, “And trying to discourage me.”

There was no response. Harry was trying very hard to give Louis the silent treatment, but Harry was easily provoked, too. That morning he’d left another sad face on the bathroom mirror, after Louis had made up a shower-song about what a coward Harry was being.

“Maybe he's worried,” Zayn said, reasonably. “I'm worried about you. That was proper scary. Want you to be safe.”

Oh, apparently that got a response: Zayn's coffee, which had gone cold on the table in front of him, warmed itself up. A tiny burst of steam rose from the top.

“Oh, ta,” Zayn said.

“I'm not giving up,” Louis glowered.

“Of course we're not giving up,” Zayn said, “We're just gonna have to try something stronger.”

 

***

 

“Ok, I found something,” Louis said. They’d gone to the library to get books, Zayn distracting the librarian with his Zayn-looks and Zayn-aura of attractive mystery. Surprisingly or maybe not surprisingly, the library had had an enormous occult section. Louis had filled an entire grocery bag with books like _Awakening the Powers Of Dormant Magicks_ and _Cleansing Your House In All Ways Including Spiritual_ and _Of Spectres and Spectation_ (nothing, he noted, on managing an ever-increasing crush on the guy haunting you, like a _He’s Just Not That Alive and You Are_ or _Long Distance Relationships: Beyond the Grave)._

Then they’d pulled two bottles of wine out of the pantry and stayed up nearly the entire night doing research. Nothing had seemed relevant at all until Louis turned the corner of a page in an extraordinarily old-looking book with no title at all, and felt like an ice chip dropped into his stomach. It wasn’t exactly a good sign, but it was a sign.

“It's like a necromancy thing, just to warn you,” Louis said.

“This does not feel like the sort of thing a respectable young witch should be doing,” Zayn fussed with his glasses, twitchy and good-looking.

“Like either of us is respectable,” Louis said, looking over the bottles of wine. They were nearly through the first. Zayn took an extra-large swig. They were seated in a new circle of potpourri, and Louis was wearing his favorite shirt, the one that swooped super low and showed his entire collarbone, because it couldn't hurt to look properly ravishable.  

“‘The Embodiment of What Longs To Be,’” Zayn read from the page that was giving Louis the curious feeling in his stomach. There were tiny skeletons drawn on the page and then, distressingly, skeletons putting on bodies like coats, nerves and entrails trailing around the words.

“Yeah, uh, sure? This looks really terrifying, so it's probably the thing to do?”

“Don't chicken out on me now,” Louis said, “I even brought out the good wine tonight, let's make it worth it.”

Louis was running his fingers along the wooden boards of the floor. They’d thrown pillows down from the couch and Zayn was sitting on one, but he wanted to be closer to the house, for some reason. 

“It says you need two people,” Louis said, “We’re two people. It says you need one of them to be a life source. That should be me, yeah? It says you need to have something to pull the dead person back.”

Louis had the photos of Harry in his lap. He fingered the edge of one of them, Harry, trapped forever in the frame, frozen. Louis was half-drunk and reckless. “Let’s go,” he said.

Zayn looked prepared to read the spell, and then he stopped, drunk and frowning. 

“Don't give him your life source, Louis,” he said. “Stop me, if you--I don’t know, if you feel it.”

“I'm not,” Louis protested, but Zayn was shaking his head and leaning in like he needed to say it quietly.

“Don't give him your life. I know what happened to him wasn't fair, but it's your life. You promise me? Promise?”

“Ok, I promise,” Louis said. He wondered what it would mean if he were caught between two promises, like a window pulled open and shut in the wind. He didn't have time to finish the thought before Zayn started reading.

Some of it was Latin, and some of it was a language that Louis didn’t even know, but Zayn slipped easily from one to the other without pause. His familiar voice rose and fell around them. Louis felt dizzy, probably from the wine.

“I want you to be free,” Louis whispered, under the sound of the spell. He put every bit of his promise into it. Whichever one.

There was a resounding crash from above them. It sounded like it came from Louis’ bedroom, like the window blasting in. _Lightning and rain._

“Fuck,” Zayn started, interrupting the spell, but something had already taken hold and it was unrolling around them, like an avalanche they’d kicked off, teetering on a stony edge.

Louis whipped around. The house was groaning around them, but it didn’t sound….it wasn’t light or joyful or the silliness of Harry. It sounded like agony. It sounded like anger.

“Zaaayn,” Louis started to say, and then he saw black pitch bubbling out from between the join of the wall and the ceiling. It was dripping, hissing like everything that it touched was burning, onto the floor, and into the beams. The wood around it was beginning to fade, a creeping grey nothing spreading out from a black hole so black it didn’t look like a color at all. It was forming into a shape that Louis couldn't see, like his brain refused it. A person, somehow.

“We have to get out,” Zayn said. He was up, standing up tall and thin and a normal-black, normal-person silhouette against the the candles and the windows. “Louis, why aren’t you getting up?”

 _You are a fool._ An older voice than Harry, clawing into Louis’ head. Something old and impatient and hostile. You're not getting out of this house. _My house._

Louis was sinking, he realized. It was like the dream, except now the dream was here so there was no safety to wake up to. He was numb from his feet up to his waist, and it was creeping upwards. He was the channel, and he was the source, and he was being _taken._ Every inch of ice on his body was letting the not-person come more into existence.  

“Don’t do this,” he whispered, because he was choking too much to say it loud, because he was gasping into the air, throat bruising, tissue folding.

Something wanted to be alive so much, it didn’t care whether Louis was.

He was falling into the floor, into the wood of the house itself, and it was darkness and cold. He was surrounded by black pitch, it was crawling up his knees, he was halfway through the wooden floorboards.

“I don’t fucking think so,” Zayn yelled. _Zayn,_ who never yelled at anything. His eyes didn't even look like his eyes anymore, gone gold-colored and gleaming. He’d leapt across a puddle of steaming pitch and his hands were scooping under Louis’ armpits and he was chanting. It wasn’t a spell, it was just _I don’t fucking think so_ over and over and over again. Or maybe it was a spell.

Louis could move. Louis was running before he could even think about it. They pushed through the front door of the house, leaving it swinging in the gale-force wind behind them.

“Harry,” he heard himself say, running down the front steps, pulled in Zayn’s wake. They slipped through predawn-wet grass, nearly falling down the hill. Zayn had Louis’ hand gripped so tight Louis couldn't feel his fingers. There was a horrible line of slinking pitch dripping down Louis’ legs, but it was wiping away in the long, cleansing grass. His jeans were ragged at the bottom, like acid had started to eat them away.

The house was dark when Louis risked a glance backward. Too dark: it was like a cloud or a heavy scrim was obscuring it. It made him shudder to look at it. There was something pulling at him, and it was angry. There was something that had roared into existence, and it was watching them.

“Well, brought something from the spirit world all right,” Louis hiccuped, breathy on adrenaline and terror and the recent loss of the ability to breath.

“Don’t look,” Zayn said, cutting and short. He was running on instinct, on adrenaline, on some leyline that Louis couldn't feel. Louis trusted him entirely, even as his heart constricted with fear.

“Zayn, Harry's back there, he’s probably scared,” Louis managed.

“I said _don’t_ ,” Zayn sounded exhausted. “Louis, you don’t--you don’t know. You felt that, that hatred? That malice?”

Louis shook his head. His feet were still slipping, but Zayn had a rock-solid grip on him.

“It can’t be Harry, doing that,” Louis said, “He’s kind. He’s a big softy. He likes _Joni Mitchell._ ”

“He’s not alive,” Zayn said, “What kind of power keeps something around for this long, when they’re not alive? Vengeance?”

Louis didn’t know. They’d crossed the boundary of the front of the property and suddenly, the sense of being safe settled on them. For now, anyway. They were walking down the road now, into the village. His feet were numb. His face was numb. It was dawn, a petal-soft glow on the horizon, a completely different universe from what they'd just survived. The village, untouched and clean and quaint down the road. Neither of them looked back at the house, black like a hole in the horizon to their backs.

“Where do we even go, Z?” Louis asked.  

“To the good witch,” Zayn said.

Louis punched him lightly in the shoulder, the suggestion of a punch, really, all he had strength for. “You’re already here, buddy.”

But Zayn shook his head. “Come on,” he said, and guided Louis on with a hand to the small of his back.

 

***

 

Agatha and Christine and Martha lived in three cottages right next to each other, because of course they did. Louis felt like he could cry, seeing them.

Zayn went straight to the grey stone cottage on the end and knocked on the door. Agatha opened it, took one look at their faces, and shooed them into her kitchen.

The kitchen had a door open into the cottage garden, which was hemmed on the other side by Christine’s cottage. Christine was out her own kitchen door, arms akimbo, before Louis had even gotten his hand around the cup of tea.

“Is it the big house, then?” Christine called, across the hollyhocks.

“And what else,” Agatha called. Christine disappeared back into her own cottage, and Louis watched the hollyhocks sway in the sunrise light, pinks and oranges. Agatha moved slowly around the kitchen, stiff and careful, an old woman in the morning. They were quiet, but the quiet felt sacrosanct and healing. 

“You poor things,” Agatha clucked, “Rest up now.”

The chair Louis had collapsed on had a soft, thick red pillow. There was a hanging basket of onions, and a little birdcage in the window. Louis felt the terror wash out of his entire body, vanishing under the firm, prosaic realness of the homey kitchen.

“Harry Styles isn't dead, and he isn't alive. He's trapped,” Louis said.

Agatha nodded. She was pouring water from a gooseneck kettle on the stove into a different mug, pulling herbs down from a creaking cabinet. Louis didn’t know why Zayn was getting different tea from his own, which smelled of cinnamon and apples, but he’d learned that Agatha was someone who always had a reason for the things she forced on you, like any good grandmother. Witch grandmother, _apparently_. Zayn’s tea smelled like smoky chai, black and spicy.

“Yes he is, dear,” she said kindly. “Shouldn't face spirits without a good breakfast,” she added, sounding mildly scolding.

“I have to save him,” Louis said. Agatha had pulled a shawl out of a bin by the door and put it over his shoulders. Louis was never going to be warm enough to satisfy anyone in this village, he thought absently.

“He almost killed you,” Zayn said, voice loud. Agatha put the second mug of tea in front of Zayn.

“I’m Zayn, I don't know why we came here,” he said, blinking up at her. Agatha nodded.

“A pleasure to see you in person. You did marvelously,” she said, “Protecting our Louis. We’re all quite fond of him.”

“He’s the absolute worst,” Zayn said, “I didn't even believe in coincidences before this. Now he’s making me learn stupid magic and he’s in love with a vengeful ghost.”

“Shut up, I am not!” Louis said, kicking him under the table, and then quelling under Agatha’s look.

“You’re my best friend in the whole world,” Zayn said. Louis kicked him again, but it was a gentle kick meant to communicate love.

Christine, coming in through the garden door, laughed loudly.

“Like anyone with eyes missed how Louis feels about that boy,” she said, scoffing.

“But no shame, who hasn't been ensorcelled by a damn spirit, eh? Zayn, as Agatha said, it is a pleasure. I’ve been so looking forward to seeing those eyelashes in real life. Even more handsome outside a bowl of scrying water.”

“Hello, second witch lady,” Zayn said weakly.

“This is my bridge team,” Louis said helpfully.

“Ah,” Zayn said.

Christine started fixing herself an entirely different mug of tea. She pulled some leaves out of her pocket and added them to the mug, yellow-colored. Louis thought it smelled, just faintly, like a the metal-oil smell of a garage.

Mr. Agatha, whose name Louis had never managed to learn, poked his head through the kitchen door.

“Early in the morning for a seance, isn’t it,” he mumbled. Agatha waved a bony hand, shooing him.

“Witch problems, my love,” she said, “It’s the haunted big house. Haunted more than usual these days.”

“Never get a bit of peace from the bloody Styles family, even when they've been dead a hundred years,” Mr. Agatha muttered, but he sounded fond, and disappeared into the depths of the cottage with a newspaper.

“This is bonkers,” Zayn said, putting his face down on the table.

“I’m inclined to agree,” Louis said. His throat still hurt from the choking, but the tea was helping immensely. It was just the way he liked it, tart and strong and clear. Agatha had taken a seat and Christine was hovering by the counter, putting scones on a tray and laying out butter.

“You’re _witches,”_ Louis said, on the chance that if he kept saying it out loud, somebody was going to deny it and the world was going to go back to normal, or at least to the weirdness that he’d felt he’d had a handle on, where Harry was his private magical secret and nothing had turned scary and immense.

“You have to get over that bit,” Christine said, “What we learnt in the war was, don’t question what’s going to help.”

“I'm sorry,” Zayn said suddenly, “Aren’t there three of you?” Louis noticed that his hand was trembling a little bit on the table. Zayn had the same face he got when he was hungover and drained.

“Such clairvoyance! You must be exhausted from it. Drink your tea, both of you,” Agatha chirped. “So delightful to have such a young witch come visit! Why, when Martha saw it in the leaves, I couldn’t believe it.”

“Thought I was a warlock,” Zayn muttered. Agatha shook a scone at him before laying two in front of Louis and patting his cheek.

“Now what on earth is a warlock,” she said. “Eat.”

Louis shoved half a scone in his mouth and talked around it.

“We were trying to bring Harry back from the spirit realm, so he could, I dunno, move on? When I talked to him in dreams, I thought--”

Agatha gasped, a quaint and polite gasp. Louis paused. Agatha found the reading glasses on the string around her neck and put them on, to look more closely at Louis’ face.

“You’ve seen him,” she said, not a question. Louis nodded. “You’ve actually _talked_ to him,”

“He started throwing a ruckus when I first moved in--” Louis smiled, involuntarily-- “And I dream about him. Or I did, before this. We’ve talked a lot.”

Enough, Louis thought. Enough to fall bloody in love with a fucking ghost. They'd lain in each other's arms and they'd talked the entire night and Louis would've just stayed there forever, probably, without even questioning it. It was so easy to think you'd resist the Gothic romance until it got its ghostly claws in you.

Zayn was worrying at his lower lip with his teeth.

“I’m fetching Martha,” Christine said on her way out the kitchen door, through the garden, through her own kitchen and to the furthest cottage. Agatha nodded without looking.

“This is...unusual, more than I realized,” she said, “No one has ever been able to make direct contact with the ghost before. I thought, well. I thought you might, when you first came. The girls thought I was even more off my rocker than usual. But I saw it in your face.”

Louis felt a strange hot rush of pride, that Harry had manifested for him. That he’d been the one to find a way in. It was matched with an equal rush of fear.

“He keeps trying to take Louis,” Zayn said, voicing the fear. Agatha looked troubled. Martha was coming in the door now, a tiny black kitten on her frail, elderly shoulder. Looking at the three old women in their wrappers, curlers in Christine’s hair, Martha wearing enormous slippers down at the heel, Louis felt surrounded by warmth and care. And power, too.

“Why is everybody a witch but me,” Louis complained, instead of giving in to the faint feeling that he wanted to cry again, but with relief.

Christine handed him yet another scone. Apparently the cure for nearly being dragged to hell was baked goods. Louis wasn’t going to argue. He piled on the butter, because he needed his strength for all this, damnit.

Martha was staring, eyes clear and sharp and penetrating. Louis tried not to wriggle under the scrutiny. It felt like being warmed in a sunbeam, moving around his skin, even though the kitchen hadn’t changed in the cool, diffuse morning light, shadowed by the stone.

“Of course _Martha’s_ charisma is insight,” Christine whispered to Zayn, sounding like a sister grudgingly admitting a sibling’s accomplishment.

“Have I got one?” Zayn asked.

“Is it being obsessed with bath products?” Louis hissed.

“Louis’ life force is tied to Harry Styles,” Martha said in her quiet voice. It wasn’t a question. “He’s been pulling the spectre into existence since he came.”

“Then Louis is the only reason he can manifest,” Agatha said. She sounded like the bearer of bad news. “It's going to be very dangerous indeed.”

“No, I don’t like this,” Zayn said. “How do we break the connection?”

“You do have a charisma,” Christine said out the side of her mouth, a little snarky, “And it’s obviously protection.”

“Now that we have Zayn, we have the power to hold back the evil for long enough,” Agatha said.

“Long enough for what?” Louis asked. Long enough to harm Harry? He wasn’t going to let that happen.

“Fire and water, lightning and rain. If it took two souls to begin with, he needs two souls now,” Christine said, “His own, and Louis.”

She fixed Louis with that gimlet glare. “You have to break the connection, Louis, you’re the only one who can. You invited him into your mind, you have to cast him out.”

Martha nodded. “He wants possession of the house again, the ancestral lands.”

“Ah, transferring ownership on the grounds,” Zayn said, “I read about this. It’s a vulnerable moment. Louis moving in for these six months without fully owning the place, it’s the window of time for the ghost, isn’t it? No wonder he was able to get into Louis’ head.”

“Harry doesn’t want any of that, Harry just wants the chance to live,” Louis said, but nobody was listening to him. The witches were all talking over him.

There was a shameful, brief moment when Louis looked down at the grain of the table and thought that it was all too much to ask, too far beyond his comprehension. He hadn’t asked for this. He wasn’t special. He could leave.

But he already knew he never would. There was something about this that felt like the weight of the future and the past, coming together to make a determination.

“I met Harry on the grounds, not in the house,” Louis said, loudly, because if there was one thing he could be it was loud, banging his mug. Remembering. That face, that had felt so familiar and so new at the same time. His very own fairy tale, that he’d willed into existence. 

“It's summer, when I dream about him, like a place where nothing ever goes wrong. But when we did the spell, it turned into winter. That’s not Harry. It’s _not._ The house itself loves him. I can feel it. The house wants us to be ok. It's something else, trying to take it all away from us.”

It was _his house._

“A soul too determined to lose. He made a limbo of that moment, in his own longing,” said Martha, looking like she was looking at something none of them could see.

“Louis was always a sucker for trying to heal sad boys,” Zayn sighed. Louis threw the last of his scone at him.

Something just wasn’t adding up. Harry _was_ longing. The freedom and the life and the love he never had. But he was gentle. Louis had never felt anything but safe, from the moment he’d met him. And Louis thought about why Harry hadn't gotten the life he deserved.

“It’s not Harry at all,” he said, and they finally all looked at him.

“What made us think there was only one ghost?”

 

***

 

There weren’t any photographs of Henry Styles, but there were stories.

In the stories, Henry Styles had been loud and brash and charming. Born with a golden tongue, with careless good looks, born with a family that had lived in the village forever, a favorite child.

Born with something dark and cold and wrong, waiting in his chest.

And then Henry Styles had married a beautiful girl, like you were supposed to do in the fairy tale, and had a son. But the son had been different--all of Henry’s charm, but all of Anne’s heart.

Henry had tried to trap his son in the house forever. And beyond all expectation, he'd succeeded.

All that was left were the stories and the house. Maybe it was the son who’d turned against the father, turned a brutal inhuman magic cutting through their frail human bodies. Maybe it was the father who’d turned a brutal, all-too-human malice toward a son whose only crime was being different. Nobody knew for sure.

Louis knew which story he was going to believe.

 

***

 

Louis swallowed hard, walking up the road to the house. He wasn’t alone, but he was the only one visible, because apparently Christine’s charisma was stealth.

“Must have come in handy,” he said out the side of his mouth.

“You’ve no idea,” Christine said. She sounded very smug for an old woman. Louis loved her. He loved all of them.

Louis was somewhat burdened by yet another one of Mr. Agatha’s coats, but he was grateful for it as they turned the curve in the dirt road and came into view of the house. It was like walking through a gauze black curtain. One minute they were marching through normal mid-morning sunlight, the next minute they were stepping into an eerie, Halloween winter.

“Kinda Tim Burton here,” Zayn said, sounding approving. The grass was grey, the sky was a deep purplish-black, and yet it glowed. Louis would’ve expected black cats to come running by or some such, but he’d gotten a lecture earlier about how black cats were actually good.

_Come back to me_

“All right, christ, eager,” Louis muttered. The others glanced at him.

“Oh, nobody heard a very ominous beckoning in their heads?” Louis asked. “Great.”

“We’ll be casting protection the whole time,” Agatha said, “But you have to find the spell yourself, Louis.”

“I swear to actual god,” Zayn said, “If it turns out that Harry has been trying to seduce you into hell and steal your life energy this whole time, he will be the absolute _worst boyfriend_ you have _ever had,_ and I’m including Shawn, who threw up on one of my paintings.”

“Shawn was a bit of a prat,” Louis agreed. He felt his own throat clench, like a probing from a creepy distance. But he was wearing ten different amulets made from Christine’s tea, and it relaxed.

“Now remember, you’re going to have to find him,” Agatha whispered, her fingers poking into Louis’ side. They were nearly at the front door, now, and it was swinging open. Everything was suspiciously quiet.

“I’m not afraid of ghosts,” Louis said, to himself, to all of them. He had no intention of losing Harry, even if it turned out that Harry was an awful hell demon, but they didn't have to know that. And he stepped through the door.

 

***

 

Interestingly, instead of stepping onto the hard wood and the familiar entryway, he was back in the grounds in front of the gazebo. Back in the dream.

“Harry?” Louis called.

“Not quite,” someone hissed behind him.

Henry Styles might have been a handsome man, once, but the effect was spoiled by the way that half of his face was hanging off a skull. The other half, such as it was, was pulled into an awful grimace, pitch and tar melting out of a revealed eye socket.

“Holy _fuck,”_ Louis said, stumbling backwards.

“I mussssst thank you,” the spectre said, his lips catching on words, flapping horribly, “I nevvvvvver imagined that I would gainnnnnn enough sssssstrength to escape that dammmmmn infinite winter.”

He was floating more than stepping forward, grass melting at his bone-feet. He reached out a hand and it brushed Louis’ chest, and then he pulled it back with a startled noise. The remaining flesh of his fingertips had curled, away from the bone.

“Sorry, very strong tea,” Louis said, “Pretty sure it’s infused with, I dunno, acceptance and love, something you never knew about. _HARRY,”_ he yelled, “AnyTIME, I’m here to get you!”

“Louis,” Harry whispered, and he was behind Louis, his long beautiful arms catching Louis around the shoulders, his mouth to the side of Louis’ head. Oh, he was stunning, real and whole and precious.

“I know everybody hates their inlaws but I mean, your dad really sucks,” Louis said. Harry was dragging him backwards, running toward the house. The half-skeleton, half-demon, all-terrible Henry Styles had gotten thrown back by the spell on the tea-amulets but he was gaining speed, drifting back toward them. Louis turned and ran, Harry's hand in his.

“Please get out,” Harry said, “Please wake up, he only needs someone, one person, let him take me. Seal off this realm forever, Louis.”

“You're honestly so sweet, and no, I’m not doing that,” Louis said, pulling him along, faster.

They'd made it to the kitchen door and Louis slammed it behind them. Henry Styles was coming through the wall anyway. Spiders ran out over the floor, a carpet of them.

“I found him,” Louis yelled, “We’re back in the house. Do the spell!”

“Bring him through, use your words,” Agatha’s voice called, through the barrier of the dream. Agatha’s charisma was communication, and thank god for it, because Louis had no idea where they were anymore, and Harry’s evil dad looked extremely pissed.

“Oh, god,” Louis gulped. They had said that anything could be a spell, if you really meant it.

“Harry Styles, _I’ll never leave you alone, come back with me,”_

There was a distortion in the air, and Harry cried out as if he were in pain. Louis threw his arms around Harry's waist, held him close and tight.

 

***

 

They were back in the real world, in the entryway of the real house where Louis had first stepped through. Four witches of various colors stood in front of them, gold and magenta and gun-metal and turquoise flames.

“Did it work?” Louis asked.

“Oh, wow,” Zayn said, staring at Harry, “You really are his type.”

Harry, who was a pale-white shining ghost beside Louis in the real world, smiled politely. His ghost hand was still clutching Louis’, like a freezing wet napkin.

“So it half-worked,” Louis said. Harry was scorchingly attractive even like this but Louis really was hoping to get something human, and all.

“He's coming,” Martha said, a hissing whisper. The house was groaning around them, black pitch starting to bubble out the floorboards.

“Un-freaking-believable, this never happened to Linda Martin,” Louis said. There was Henry Styles, real and terrible, a howling spectre forming in the middle of the living room. The television cracked right down the middle.

“Uh, you brought back more than your boyfriend,” Zayn said. And then he was murmuring Latin, or something even older, sparks coming out of his fingers.

“C’mon, Harry,” Louis yelled, “You gotta...suck some life out of me, or something!”

“What? I would never,” Harry recoiled adorably, ghost-face scrunched in confusion.

Christine was wielding holy water in a spray bottle, laying it out in a determined mist through the air, pushing the spirit back. Henry Styles screamed with rage. Zayn and Martha and Agatha were chanting their protection spell, and Louis was pretty sure that was the only reason that he was still alive. He could feel Henry Styles’ terrible black magic pulling at his throat, crawling through the channel in his mind, trying to steal his life.

Harry looked scared, terrified, and yet he was propelling himself forward with every ounce of his ghostly energy, getting in front of Louis and into the path of the magic. For a horrible moment, it looked like Harry was dragging towards the dark, whirling hole of evil, and Henry Styles was becoming substantial.

However, Harry was transparent, so Louis barreled right through his chest, cutting into the path.

“I am _not afraid!”_ Louis yelled.

The house _shook._ A beam came crashing down on the living room floor, windows shattering. There was a pulse of yellow light, scattering debris away from Louis and Zayn, something that Christine had yelled.

“Sonnnnnnnnn,” Henry Styles hissed, sibilant, an oil-slick black pool of evil blobbing out on the wood around him, “You have always lost, and you will lossssssse againnnnn,”

“I met someone,” Harry said, in his low, sweet, steady voice, “And he showed me that you were wrong. About everything.”

Louis already knew he was gone but damnit, he _loved_ Harry.

“ _You're_ the loser,” Louis said, not the most cutting repartee, but Henry Styles was an avalanche of fear and hate, bat shrieks and spiders. Louis could feel the warping of gravity as he slid further into reality, reached his bone-sick hands out to drag Louis to hell and Harry to nonexistence. Agatha and Martha and Christine were chanting, but their voices were losing vigor, the debris thundering down from the ceiling.

“LOUIS,” Zayn bellowed, “Fucking _DO THE SPELL!”_

“What spell?” Louis yelled. “I don't know what to do!”

“What you said,” Zayn shrieked, hair aflame, eyes blazing, whipping his left hand out to catch another falling beam without even looking. “It was a powerful spell, Louis, do it again!”

“Right!” Louis yelled. “Right, right!” 

He took a deep breath.

“You weak, cowardly homophobe,” Louis yelled, “I am _not afraid!”_

 

***

 

The house was released. The living room was a wreck, but the rest of it seemed stable and ordinary. Rising dust clouds hung over the living room, but it was no longer dark: sun shone in through the windows. At Louis’ words,Henry Styles had vanished like he’d never been there at all.

And so had Harry.

“No,” Louis stuttered, “No, Harry, no, no, no.”

Zayn turned to him, eyes big and wary as a cat's. His own eyes, again. “I'm sorry, babe, I don't feel anything. There aren't any spirits here any more.”

Agatha raised a wrinkled, veined hand, like she was feeling the air. “The haunting is released,” she murmured.

“No,” Louis was shaking his head. He hadn't even gotten to say goodbye. It wasn't fair. Harry had never gotten to see the real flowers.

Louis pushed past all the witches and back out the kitchen door, his lungs burning, his eyes burning. He ran for the rolling hill between the house and the gazebo and when he got there, he crashed down into the grass. It wasn’t a dream. Louis knew with a kind of sick certainty that the dreams were over, now, that mysterious bubble of a universe was gone. It was just him, no more channel or connection or portal. Just Louis.

“I'm sorry, I'm selfish,” he said. To the grounds. To the house. To a universe without Harry in it. “Maybe this was the whole point, helping Harry move on. I know…this isn't fucking about me.”

But. But. Louis couldn't help the waves of grief and loss. Like he'd lost the most special thing he'd ever found.

You couldn't do that to people, keep them trapped. You had to let them go. Louis felt his face screwing up with anguish, and was glad it was buried in the grass. He tried incredibly hard, to be better than this.

“I hope you're happy,” Louis said.

“I think I am,” said a voice, low and familiar and _there._ A hand that Louis knew settled on his back, between his shoulders.

It was almost too scary to look, but he'd never let that stop him. He opened his eyes.

“Hello again,” Harry said, smiling and joyful and human. He pulled Louis into his arms in the warm grass, and didn't let go.

 

***

 

“Are you going to answer your small television?” Harry asked.

Louis fell over on their picnic blanket, he was giggling so hard. It had been four weeks and three days since the battle (since Harry’s reincarnation, since the cleansing of the house, since the banishment of Henry Styles into an unforgiving afterlife, since the house was his--theirs--since Harry had a _body,_ since Louis had been able to fall into that body and never, ever let go again, since Louis’ life had changed forever).

Harry was learning fast, but every old-timey thing Harry said was still hilarious to Louis. He should probably get used to it, but judging from the way that Harry was smirking at him over the blanket, he didn’t mind. Louis suspected he was even doing it on purpose.

They were sprawled out in their favorite spot on the rolling green grass between the house and the gazebo. It smelled, this time, like the full-bloom roses that were behind them, lush and red and vibrant and full of bees. Everything was real.

Harry pulled Louis’ phone out of his pocket.

“Niall,” he read. Harry loved reading things off screens, and reading in general. Louis had ordered a kindle for Harry. Christine was going to deliver it to him at the next bridge night. Louis couldn't wait to see his face light up.

Harry's face lit up at a lot of things, at everything that Louis showed him, at small dogs and every sunrise and Louis’ attempts at cooking and a million and one things that Louis told him about the world. At kissing and talking and interrupting each thing with the other. They weren't going to run out of things to show Harry anytime soon.

“Oh, you’re gonna love Niall,” Louis said. Harry handed Louis the phone and he put it up to his ear. Harry was running his fingers through Louis’ hair, so Louis definitely was not sitting up.

“Niall,” he said, “It’s been a minute!”

“Louuuu,” Niall wailed, “I tried Zayn, and he said I had to call you,”

“Umm, yeah, I’ve got some news,” Louis said, glancing up at Harry. Harry was still the most beautiful boy that Louis had ever seen. And he was still real.

“News can wait, I've got bigger,” Niall said.

Louis highly doubted that, but Niall’s tone had a strange urgency to it. “What’s going on?” he asked.

Niall laughed, nervously, maybe even hysterically. “I’ve got a problem. A big problem. A crazy, insane problem. And Zayn said to call _you._ No, actually, Zayn said that _the tea_ said to call you, which is also crazy, but apparently that’s what the world is right now.”

“Please calm down,” Louis said, “Also, Zayn is a witch now. It’s part of the news.”

Harry nodded happily. Harry and Zayn had gotten on like a house on fire. They'd played a lot of pop and EDM music before Zayn had headed back to London, and Harry loved all of Zayn's bands. Zayn had said that Harry still had his own particular magic, ruffling Harry's hair. Louis hadn't known whether that meant that Harry retained residual supernaturality as a former ghost, or whether it was just because Harry was a total charmer. He supposed it didn't even matter.

“Ok, umm, we'll talk about Zayn later,” Niall said, “Zayn said I needed you. Said something about a….about a calling. Said that it was time for the two of you to leave the honeymoon and get on with adventures. Which by the way, _two_ of you?”

“Umm,” Louis said, “It’s also part of the news.”

“I think I’m being haunted,” Niall said.

“Oh my god,” Louis said, “Did you buy a white nightgown though?”

“What the fuck,” Niall said faintly, “Look, I'm at my grandparents’ castle, and I'm hearing harp music every night, and I keep waking up in the middle of the battlements.”

“Super excellent,” Louis said. “I read one of the novels about a castle.”

“Nothing about this is excellent!” Niall wailed.

“We'll be right there,” Louis said, doing his best to sound soothing. “Have Zayn think about some candle flavors for you. And try talking to it!”

Niall made an incoherent noise, the kind of noise you make when your mind has taken about all that it can take and it's going on strike. Louis hung up before he could do more damage.

Louis dropped the phone in the grass, and looked up at Harry’s face, open in the sunlight.

Who’d make better ghost hunters than a former ghost and the boy who saved him?

“Babe,” he said carefully, “Are you ready to go on a trip? You don’t have to be,” he emphasized.

It was a lot, this new world, so much for Harry to learn so quickly. Louis was ready to stay in this house and this village for years, if that’s what Harry needed.

Harry rolled his fingers on either side of Louis’ head, scratching affectionately. Louis beamed up at him. Louis was entirely addicted to Harry’s touch, and Harry didn’t seem to ever want to stop touching him. He scooted closer, put his head fully in Harry’s lap.

“Yes, what did you say in bed last night? I was born ready,” Harry said, soft and sweet and flirtatious and the death of Louis, every time.

“I have lived over a hundred years on these grounds. And they are ours, but let us see the world, too. I would enjoy the riddle of Niall's ghost.”

Louis and Harry. Off to see the world, which was bigger and more multifaceted and full of magic and ghosts and demons and witches and all kinds of things that Louis didn’t even half understand, yet. And really good ravishing, which had so far outstripped even his wildest dreams.

“It’s going to be so much fun,” Louis said.

“Yes,” Harry said, joyful. “And I need to meet your mother and sisters, before we are married.”

“ _What?”_ Louis yelped. Harry booped him on the nose with a finger.

“We can be married in the eyes of the law, now,” Harry said, with an air of injury. “Do not think I’ve _forgotten._ I would like to claim you in every court. Zayn says that you can even take my name, in this era. Zayn has told me many things.”

“Oh my god,” Louis spluttered, “No, yes, you are correct about the laws, and it’s wonderful, but, we’ve only been...together...or whatever we've been, I mean, does haunting me count as dating? It's only been seven months!”

“And,” he added as an afterthought, “You could take _my_ name.”

Harry gathered his hands underneath Louis’ shoulders, pulled him up to crush their faces close in together. Louis had made great strides in treating Harry like the real human being he was again but then…he looked into the depths of Harry's perfect eyes and saw more. Infinity.

“I know you,” Harry said, “From the inside, to the outside, from every shape of your thoughts, to every feeling in your heart. You are my soulmate, in the truest sense, beyond the feeble barriers of this spinning planet and these bodies. Your soul called me out of time. You saved me, and I will have you forever.”

Louis couldn’t breath in the intensity of Harry’s gaze. He didn’t doubt a word.

“But,” Harry said, folding Louis back down into his lap, carefully. “We can wait, I suppose. I know that you modern boys like to take things slow.”

Harry grinned at him, lazy and happy. Louis opened his mouth, and closed it, face as red as the roses behind them.

“You’re awful,” Louis said.

“Yes,” Harry agreed.

“I’m going to love you forever,” Louis said.

“Yes,” Harry agreed.

“You old fashioned types don't play fair, a heroine doesn't stand a chance,” Louis said.

“I had a very long time to imagine what I would do once I found you,” Harry murmured behind half-closed eyes. His legs were still solid under Louis, the rise and fall of his chest and stomach steady. And yet Louis rather thought he shone in the sunlight, more than he should.

**Author's Note:**

> Paranormal investigator boyfriends 5ever!


End file.
